


the nighthawks

by iconicponytail



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Grundy is here but I'm trying to Deal With It Better, Southside Jughead, assume canon unless I say otherwise, season 1 rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26158855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iconicponytail/pseuds/iconicponytail
Summary: “You guys want to join us?” Her voice is like golden syrup, light and warm. Archie is still frozen, so Jughead takes the bait, unsure where his uncharacteristic lightness and confidence come from.“Only if you’re treating.” He saunters over to their booth and hops around the bench, climbing over and into the vacancy next to Veronica. “Long time no see, Betty.” An understatement; he’s not sure she remembers seeing him at all.She smiles back, genuinely, and sighs, “Wow. Jughead Jones.”“The third,” is all he can manage, taken aback by her clear memory of him and the way she searches his face for hints of the boy she had met, once.--a season one AU
Relationships: Archie Andrews & Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper & Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 200
Kudos: 171
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	1. one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The crazy story about this fic is that I wrote 99% of this chapter in February of 2018, which means it is, in fact, the first bughead fic I ever wrote. This was a shock to me, as I was organizing my google drive and low and behold, "untitled bughead" emerged. WHO WROTE THIS? I thought, because I had zero recollection that it was, in fact, me.
> 
> Upon reading what is half of betty's POV (in chapter 2 , following soon) and the entirety of jughead's in this chapter, I realized it was a season 1 canon divergent rewrite, integrating a southside jughead from a season two world of 2018 (oh ho ho).
> 
> I thought, well, the time has passed for such a fic. And then, immediately I was like WAIT I love this. WAIT, the time has actually never been better for such a fic. Canon is a black hole of highest hopes at best at this point, an object of all our prayers and spells and vibes and pleas. Let us take refuge in what we know: Bughead over everything. Season one Betty and Jughead. The altar of the last three years of my life.
> 
> All this to say, I have no outline. I have no chapter count. It will be what it will be, chapter to chapter. I don't usually do this, but here we are. It's 2020. None of us know anything. As such, I'll add tags as I go.
> 
> This fic is titled after the Edward Hopper painting, with great homage to this post: https://riverdalearthistory.tumblr.com/post/627186713714884608/riverdalearthistory-nighthawks-detail-1942
> 
> Check the tags; hope you enjoy this very self-indulgent project of mine. We begin with Jughead, in 1x02: A Touch of Evil. Assume canon unless I say so. (And I will say so.)

_I'll be your friend in the daylight again  
_ _There we will be, like an old enemy  
_ _Like the salt and the sea_

**_—the lumineers_ **

* * *

  
  


Jughead palms his fresh cup of coffee and rolls his shoulders back, feeling the crunch of his back unravel after hours hunched over his laptop. Pop’s rarely sits empty on a Thursday night—the benefits of Riverdale’s back to school dance. Northside or Southside, high school kids from both sides of the tracks dress up and endure a special hell of social awkwardness and call it magic; not for the likes of Jughead Jones.

At this point of course, the Southside dance had likely migrated to a party in an empty lot, to be busted by Sheriff Keller as the clock rounded on midnight. The Northsiders would celebrate far past curfew without recompense at Thornhill. 

Pop’s was the ideal haven, a midpoint where the Southside crew didn’t typically stray. For the past few months he’s been avoiding as much explicit Serpent territory as possible—Pop’s and the Twilight Drive-In became his refuge.

“You want a burger or anything, Jug?” Pop calls over the counter. “I can make you one to take home. One for your old man, too?” 

Jughead smiles at Pop Tate’s unflinching generosity, but shakes his head. Pop knows, or suspects, that he and FP aren’t exactly on the best terms. Pop means well, would probably help if Jughead asked. Asking for help is not exactly Jughead Jones, either. Anyway, Pop probably helped him out more than one should, slipping him extra orders of fries and endless free refills. 

_If you wanna eat the bread I put on that table, you’ll respect the people who got it there._

_Then I’ll find another table._

Jughead swallows, denying the near constant hum of hunger that, these days, churns at a constant roar. “I’m good, Pop. I think I might stick around a little longer.” Jughead doesn’t allude to this father. 

Just as Jughead has refocused on his last paragraph, reworking the opening for his novel, the door chimes.

“Hey Pop, Betty hasn’t come in has she?”

Jughead glances up from his keyboard at the sound of the voice. Taller, filled out, but with the same shocking orange hair and earnest eyes: Archie Andrews. 

“No, just the nighthawks in,” Pop responds, tilting his head to indicate Jughead’s booth. Archie’s eyes met his.

“Jughead? Wow, it’s been… God, I don’t even know how long it’s been. Which is probably… my fault.” Archie probably does know; it was Memorial Day, three years ago. But perhaps it was easier to forget when it wasn’t Fred Andrews who had spent the whole night puking in a small trailer bathroom, with screaming matches between his parents lasting until dawn. 

Jughead smirks a little, and shakes his head only slightly. Archie’s not wrong, but the end of their school-aged hangouts wasn’t his own fault. Jughead couldn’t have forgotten the Andrews’ name even if he’d wanted to; the fallout of their fathers still hadn’t left the drunken grievances of FP. Archie was a reminder of barbecues and kickball games on the Northside, of family friends, of _hell—_ having a semblance of a family. Of pizza and video games and dragging Jellybean along to Pop’s on hot summer afternoons. 

Archie exhales a little. “Can I sit?”

“If you want to.”

Archie’s eyes drag to the laptop. “What are you working on? How’ve you been? How’s JB and… everybody?”

Jughead looks sideways to avoid eye contact and answers the only question that doesn’t make him want to run away. “I’m uh, writing. A story, or sorts, maybe a book. About everything that happened this summer with Jason Blossom.”

Somehow, it is easier to discuss the grizzly death of a teenager to avoid telling the golden boy about the family trauma that had spun only further out of control since they parted ways. It works, Archie’s face twists with passion. 

“Seventeen years old and how will he be remembered? As captain of the water polo team? I mean… do you think he was he doing everything he wanted?” 

Jughead could sense the direction of their conversation already, but he didn’t mind. Avoidance was everything. Especially with Archie, someone who knew both so little about him, and yet more than many of his closest friends at Southside. 

“I heard you’re going to be a varsity football player,” Jughead notes with a nod of his head to the all-telling counter of Pop’s. “Sounds like you’re doing what every popular teenage boy could want.” 

Archie lets out a puff of air, clearly pent up, ready to release something. “That’s just it. I don’t know if that’s who I am, or who I want to be. And… I think I hurt someone tonight. Someone I really care about. Someone I don’t want to lose.” Archie’s shoulders slump, dejected.

Jughead shakes his head again. “I’m sure she’ll forgive you. You should go find her, which is probably what you came here to do in the first place. You’re Archie Andrews. No one stays mad at Archie Andrews.” He finishes his pseudo pep-talk with another smirk and a sip of his coffee. 

Archie looks poised to respond but stops, realizing Jughead’s own admission of forgiveness. 

“Thanks man. Hey, maybe I’ll see you around soon. This was… well, it’s good to see you. I’m glad you’re still writing.”

Jughead nods, a little awkwardly, unsure how to respond but also not sure he needs to. “Well, it’s online, for the Southside High website. The _Red and Black._ We may be under-resourced, but we’ve still got a one-man show of a school newspaper. Hardly a viral sensation, but it’s a start.” 

Archie laughs as he stands to go. “I’m not sure Riverdale High even has a school paper anymore. I’ll check it out.”

Jughead has no idea if he means it, but he’s practiced in not investing in whether or not people care. 

Two hours later, he’s glad he’s had that extra cup of coffee when he sees the Sheriff’s siren speed by, probably heading to break up the Southside after-party. But the car swings off on the cut-off to Sweetwater River. He slams his laptop shut, digs out a couple coins in his pocket for a tip that will probably just go towards offsetting the dozen free meals Pop has waved off over the past few months. He hurries out the door, fixing his beanie ever closer to his head. 

Jughead braces himself for what he might find at the end of the Sweetwater path, but he couldn’t turn the other way, either. For better or for worse, the last few months, the unfolding twisted secrets of Riverdale sat constantly at the back of his mind. 

  
  
  
  


A gunshot.

That’s all Jughead can think about when he walks through the metal detectors, late for 2nd period. He’d slept through his alarm and only awoke when Toni’s grandpa opened the garage and saw him still asleep on the couch. 

Officer Huntley, the Southside High School resource officer, barks at Jughead extra sharply this morning. “Jones! This is high school, not a 4th of July barbecue. We don’t arrive when we want to, we arrive on time.”

“Save it, Hunts,” Jughead grumbles. Southside High is far from the bastion of academic prowess, and he’s one of the best students there. Mr. Phillips would forgive him. 

He doesn’t head to English, but ducks up the stairs to the third floor and into the maze of old file cabinets, discarded textbooks that made up the storage closet and make-shift office of the _Red and Black._ His laptop had died around 4:30, and he hadn’t had time to charge it. He plugs it in and drums his fingers while he waits for the _Red and Black_ website to boot up.

The article about Jason Blossom’s body has already generated some traffic, but he saw Alice Cooper rapping on the door of the Sheriff’s office very early that morning; there had to be something printed in the Herald that morning as well. 

Still, it’s generated more views from a Southside audience, which is a first. Rich, white teenager from the Northside goes missing? So what. Washes up dead with a shot to the head? Now the gang talk starts. 

Jug scrolls through the comments. A few of the expected, mourning Jason. Even a few thinking the same thing as Jughead is: why was his body found only now if he’s been missing for months, and the river was dragged? Then, of course, the inevitable, and back and forth between a few Serpents and Ghoulies making claims about who may or may not have shot him. All grandstanding; Jug can even identify some of the commenters in question purely from the garishness of their usernames, and he knew it was a ruse for street cred.

Jughead’s administrator inbox has (8) new messages. He combs through them, mostly extensions of the comments either questioning his focus on the “dead rich kid” or expressing sadness over the details presented. 

_Hey Jug, it’s Archie. Saw your article. I think I have some information that might be useful, but I need to be anonymous. Text me your phone number (555 765 4321)_

Jughead blinks a couple of times to see if he’s reading it correctly, checks the incoming email address, and sure enough, it’s logged as archibaldandrews@rhs.edu

Too curious, he pulls out his beat up cell and punches the numbers in.

**Hi Archie. Where should I meet you? -JJ**

  
  
  
  


“Shit, Jug. If the bags under your eyes were any worse I’d think you got punched in the face,” Toni greets him at their usual lunch table. He rolls his eyes in response. She doesn’t push any farther. She probably heard from her grandpa that he’s crashed in the garage again.

Sweet Pea sidles up to the table with a half smirk that tells Jughead that Sweets is about to dish some gossip. Despite his intimidating stature, Sweet Pea was more of a teenage gossip girl than anyone he’d ever met. 

“There was just the _wildest_ catfight in the chem lab, you will not believe.” Toni feigns interest, Jughead keeps checking his phone for a reply from Archie. “These Ghoulie—women—” he pointedly edits with a look at Toni. “They were trying to tell me they knew Malachi killed Jason Blossom. Fucking ridiculous.” Jughead hears him but doesn’t respond. It all seemed on par with the comments his article had generated, plus, he was exhausted.

“Hey, Jones.” Jughead’s head jerks up. He’d been drifting, the few hours of crashing on Toni’s garage sofa not enough to keep him at least pretending to care about Sweet Pea’s story. “What’s up with you? You’re even more of weirdo than normal today.” 

“Had a long night.” 

“Yeah? Mr. Mystery staying out too late writing about all the big bad in this town? Shit, man. We’ve been around that big bad every fucking day in the hellhole of this school. Want a human interest story? Write about how this school is too fucking broke to have proper chem lab equipment, and the few test tubes we do have get smashed by Ghoulies trying to go at me on a Friday morning.” 

Jughead struggles not to roll his eyes, but knows better. Sweet Pea, of anyone he knows, has a complex about the Southside. Growing up here, they all know the same shit. Trailer parks, biker bars, and a geographical allegiance to gang life. Jughead may technically be a Serpent, but he doesn’t wear it like Sweet Pea. Quite literally; though he has his father’s first leather, it’s in the closet in FP’s trailer, where he left it months ago. He has a tattoo, but it’s discreet. A viper up the back of his right calf. Something that someday he could make up another story about.

The problem is that he used to trust Serpents, used to defend their name proudly. Now, well, Jughead knows what he knows.

Under the table, he pulls out his phone and sees a response from Archie:

_I need to check my source, not sure if the information is any good. I’ll text you later._

Jughead can’t hide his furrowed brow. Toni nudges him. “What’s up? FP?”

He shakes his head, not sure why Archie’s text floods him with discomfort. He knows that Archie is loyal to a fault, and his most recent text sounds like he’s hedging, protecting something. 

“No. It’s nothing.” He stows the phone and turns back to Sweet Pea. “So what was the fight about, anyway?”

“Doesn’t make a lot of sense, since Malachi was still locked up in July. Pieces of shit think they know something, but it’s all just posturing. No one has a clue what happened to that kid.”

The bell rings, and the table files towards the cafeteria doors. Jughead mostly ignores the comments about Malachi. The ruthless leader of the Ghoulies was disturbing, but Sweet Pea was right. Besides, Jason didn’t seem like the type to get wrapped up in the Southside drug business. 

Then again, Jughead reminds himself, there’s got to be a lot they don’t know about Jason Blossom. He never even knew the kid; but how could he turn away from a story like this? How could he deny the desire to follow it to it’s chilling ends, even if Jughead doesn’t think he’ll like what he finds? 

Still, it was hard to be the chief investigating journalist from afar. Maybe that was the next step, and he decides to pay a visit to Riverdale High to have a chat with Archie Andrews.

  
  
  
  


Or just to explore. Unlike the metal detector gilded gates of Southside High, he was able to walk into Riverdale without a second glance. He’s not sure where to go, and finds himself marking the obvious comparisons between the towns’ two schools. The paint here, though dull, doesn’t flake. The trophy cabinets look like they get dusted more than once a decade (though Jughead blanches a little at the candle lit vigil; seems like a fire hazard). Then again, Southside doesn’t really have many trophies for its cases. Not enough funding for a full offering of extracurriculars. The teenagers of the Southside spend their after school time hustling in whatever method they prefer most. (Jughead, with his minimum wage job and academic gamble of get-a-scholarship-and-get-the-hell-out, is not among the most common of coping methods. Then again, he’s homeless, so maybe not the thriving role model his hesitation towards illegal activity advertises.)

He peeks into the auditorium, and sees a trio of girls gathering around keyboards and guitars. Josie and the Pussycats; of course the Southside kids know about the mayor’s daughter. He keeps walking, surprised not to have run into any students yet. He wonders if Archie was wrong about a school newspaper at Riverdale and considers, briefly, what his own counterpart might be like. 

Gladys wanted him to go here, had gotten all of the paperwork in order for him to transfer for his sophomore year, but things never got finalized. Now, those transfer documents could be anywhere. Not that it mattered. No one was exactly waking him up for school every morning.

He supposes he should try to find Archie, ostensibly still at football practice. He wanders towards the opposite end of the hallway, hoping to spot a sign for locker rooms, when he hears echoed shouts and the tell-tale sign: GYMNASIUM. 

There is no way to walk in without being noticed, and being noticed by Riverdale football jocks is not really the goal. He cracks the door as little as possible. 

No football players. Maybe worse, the River Vixens. He quickly and quietly closes the door. He was not here to interview cheerleaders. That deserved some kind of deep, undercover agent.

He decides to wait in the vicinity rather than get caught unawares, but less than a minute later, a raven-haired Vixen emerges from the gym. She almost glances past him, checking back and forth between her phone and her path, but she does a double take at the unfamiliar beanie-clad boy lurking in the halls.

“Hey… are you waiting for someone?”

She makes lying a little easier. “Uh, yeah, I’m looking for Archie Andrews?”

She cocks her head and steps closer to him, really examining him. He holds his breath a little, unnerved by the intensity of her expression. She clutches a literal pearl necklace, and the juxtaposition of him, a homeless Southside kid and a rich Riverdale princess unnerves him more than he wishes it did, but he gulps and holds his ground.

“Um, he’s… I’m not really sure. Do you… go to Riverdale? I’m Veronica Lodge. I’m new but I can’t say I have seen you around. Are you a friend of Archie’s?” She twirls the pearls in a loop around her fingers.

_Lodge._ The name clicks, whirring his curiosity to life, but he squashes it for now. Jughead avoids the first question by answering her last one. “Yeah, uh, old friend. When we were kids. He wasn’t at football practice?”

“Oh wow, really?” Her face lights up a little. “What’s your name? I thought Betty was Archie’s oldest friend.”

It’s like she knows his avoidance tactics and plays them completely opposite, avoiding his last question. She won’t stop scanning him, but not in a checking-him-out way (not that anyone ever looked at him like that), but very objectively, like she’s memorizing him for a test. 

“I um, I don’t know,” he mumbles, forgetting her question entirely in his discomfort. He’s making things worse; he watches her curiosity inflate moment by moment. 

“I mean,” he manages to start, without stammering, “My name is Jughead. I’m looking for Archie. Have you seen him?”

“Jughead. Nice to meet you.” Veronica Lodge extends a hand. He takes it warily. She shakes firmly. “Football practice was cancelled, but Archie might still be around the music room. I take it you don’t know your way around, but it’s upstairs and to the left.”

“Thanks, and I’m--”

“Don’t worry about it. Listen, I need a favor.”

_Great_. Now he was indebted to Veronica Lodge.

“You said you’re Archie’s childhood friend? So you know Betty, right? Betty Cooper?”

_I know of our town media moguls, Alice and Hal Cooper, who live next door to the Andrews. I know they have two daughters who once played kickball with him and Jellybean in the Andrews backyard. Archie kicked the ball too far and Alice Cooper came yelling at them. She took the blonde girls, Polly and Betty, home with her. After that, whenever Archie asked them to play, Mrs. Cooper said the girls were too busy._

“Um, no.” Veronica’s face falls a little. “Not really.” 

“That’s okay. Nevermind. Nice to meet you, Jughead.”

He nods, which is as much as he can do to return the sentiment. She returns to the gym with a small wave, and he takes the stairs two at a time. Jughead would never peg Archie for a musical guy, so he’s confused as he heads towards the music room, which he approaches quietly, not hearing any music.

He’s not ready for what he sees.

  
  
  
  


Jughead almost heads back to the Drive In for the night, content to take a break from the sleuthing, after his latest discovery.

But he also can’t get the image of Archie, his childhood best friend, and the Riverdale music teacher out of his head. He feels sick and haunted and not sure where to go. This was the kind of shit that adults were for, but Jughead didn’t have any of those to turn to.

He can’t remember the way to Archie’s exactly; it had been a long time since they had raced bikes through town, so he wanders the residential streets near Riverdale High for a while before he starts to recognize some of the trees at the end of a hill. He actually sees the Cooper’s house first. He wonders what kind of vitriol the newest development in the Blossom case is boiling under the surface of Alice Cooper’s skin. 

Jughead doesn’t want to rouse the attention of Fred Andrews, so he perches on the steps, ready to catch Archie on his return home. He doesn’t have to wait long.

Archie is digging for his keys when he looks up and spots Jughead on the steps.

“Whoa, what’s up? Jughead, what are you doing here?” 

Jughead hadn’t been sure how to approach the events of the afternoon, but it all comes out easier than he had expected. 

“‘What’s up’ is that I saw you, Archie. In the music room. With… your teacher.”

“Jug!” Archie hushes. “Keep your voice down! My dad’s inside.”

_And he should be hearing this, too._ Jughead gets off the step, righteous anger bubbling up with an unknown warrant. He could have walked away, but he didn’t, because even if he didn’t mean much to Archie anymore, somehow Archie still meant something to him.

“Listen, I’m trying to be… your friend, dude. Even though… we’re not anymore. So tell me. How long has this been… happening?” _To you,_ he wants to add, but Archie seems defensive enough.

Archie opens his mouth a few times, but no sounds come out until a strangled, “This summer.”

Jughead narrows his eyes, pressing for more. 

“I- I like her. I wanted it,” he mumbles, and glances towards the house, as if his father can hear everything he’s saying.

“So, what? Archie, this is… I mean, it’s statutory rape, for one. Does this have anything to do with what you texted me? What you wanted to tell me today before you chickened out?” He doesn’t drop his volume. 

Archie hesitates for a while. Jughead feels the insanity of the conversation, not only its topic, but the fact that they are even standing there having it in the first place. He should be calling someone—the police? A hotline? 

“Ms. Grundy… Geralidine. She and I were at Sweetwater River the morning of July 4th. We heard a gunshot… _the_ gunshot.”

His head is spinning. His instinct that Archie was protecting someone had been right, but this was more than he’d signed up for. “Archie, dude, you’ve _got_ to tell someone. This is not a tip line for a fucking high school journalist.” 

“No! I can’t tell anyone! And neither can you. If anyone finds out about me and Geraldine…”

“She’ll be rightfully sent to prison? Yeah, sorry for not having any sympathy for your pedophile girlfriend. A kid is _dead_ , Archie.”

“Don’t call her that! She cares about me, okay?”

Jughead exhales sharply through his nose, trying to keep his anger in check; about Archie’s idiocy, about the predatory music teacher, about his own inability to detach from this toxic situation.

“Just a stab in the dark, Archie, I’m pretty sure she cares more about protecting herself. Of course she doesn’t want you to tell anyone, because she’s the one who will go down for this. She’s messing with you, man. Manipulating you.”

“What do you know about it, Jug? What do you know about me, even?”

“Nothing! Fuck, Archie, but I _used_ to know that you were my best friend. And even though you weren’t perfect, you wanted to do the right thing.” Jughead already regrets the entire encounter, regrets his own vulnerability and the attempt to care for yet another person who had stopped caring about him. He starts to walk towards his bike, to get away, to wash his hands of the whole thing. 

“Wait, Jug, if you tell anyone…” Archie warns, grabbing Jughead by the bicep.

Jughead spins around again, hating his anger, his emotion so apparent. “What? What are you going to do, Archie?” He wrests his arm away and doesn’t look back, especially when he hears the front door open. He’s fastening his helmet and kicking the motorcycle into gear when he hears Fred Andrews.

“Archie… was that Jughead?”

  
  
  
  


Jughead sleeps through his alarms and a thunderstorm that rattled the projection room. Saturdays, though great for sleeping, now presented Jughead a giant void. He can’t hang out in the usual haunts anymore, besides this one, which only ran movies every _other_ Friday these days. There was always Toni, but lately, every interaction of theirs felt heavy with the unspoken concerns about his insecure housing situation. She doesn’t pry or get motherly about it, but it colors every exchange they have had since she showed up at the trailer this summer and got told off by a drunk FP. It was nice of her to offer the garage, but he was wary of indebtedness to any Serpents these days. Even Toni. 

When he wakes, he checks the time: 3:45 PM. Making up for lost sleep. Then he sees a text from Archie.

_I’m sorry. I want to do something. I just don’t know how. I reached out before because I need help. I know that’s all you wanted to do. Can’t talk today, got a big game tonight. But I hope maybe we can talk soon. Sorry again, Jug. -Arch_

Jughead wants to ignore it, but he can’t. He spends the afternoon reorganizing the film reels, thinking about what movie he’s going to play this Friday. As the hours creep towards seven, he knows he’s going back to Riverdale High. 

Despite the rain that’s hovered all day, the stands at the football field are packed with parents, students and teachers decked in blue and gold. Even though high school spirit is the furthest possible category from his ‘thing,’ he’s a little intoxicated by the narrative, if only for its normalcy. Predictability. If only the quarterback hadn’t been murdered this summer, it would be downright idyllic.

He stands to the side of the stands, hoping that he wasn’t supposed to have a ticket or something. Well, he definitely was, but more so hoping that no one would ask him for one, since he’d slipped through a hole in the fence. The football team warms up, the cheerleaders are gathered, tossing damp pompoms. He notices Veronica Lodge from the day before, and of course, Cheryl Blossom. 

Archie stands on the sidelines, and Jughead wonders what his plan was in coming here, if he has no way of getting Archie’s attention. But then he notices the woman sitting behind the scoretable; the same one who he’d seen pushing her tongue down Archie’s throat in the music room. Almost imperceptibly, he notices Archie’s lips are moving, even though he stares directly ahead. Ms. Grundy nods, slowly, not enough to be detected. After a few moments, Archie walks away, seeking a trash can for his water cup and headed straight for Jughead’s side of the bleachers.

“Oh, Jughead!” Archie’s surprise comes with a small smile, but it slips into a somber face quickly. “I’m glad you’re here. I just talked to… well, she agreed to tell Principal Weatherbee and Sheriff Keller with me on Monday.” Archie shuffles a little and runs his hands through his hair a few times. “And… I’m sorry about yesterday, I was a jerk to you. You wanted to help and I… well, I pushed you away and I’m sorry.”

Jughead nods and suppresses a little smile, unable to help the balloon of relief rising in his chest. He can’t help but give a smug rebuke. “We don’t have to do this, you know. We can just grunt and clap each other on the back and forget we ever had any of these _feelings_.” 

Archie laughs. “Friends?” 

“To be discussed. Over many burgers. Over many days. “

Archie’s smile grows wider. “After the game?” Jughead shrugs but his smug smile hasn’t dissolved. A whistle blows and Archie takes a backward jog towards the field, almost colliding with a cheerleader with a bouncy blonde ponytail.

“Dude, watch out!” he calls.

The blonde side-steps Archie quickly. “Arch!” The pair of them slow, and then stare blankly at each other. Immediately, Jughead knows. _Betty Cooper._

Jughead isn’t even paying attention to the strange interaction between her and Archie. He can’t stop zeroing in on her. He remembers, plainly, for whatever reason, the gap toothed Betty who would always demand that Archie play fair and never teased Jughead about his weird name, even when her sister did. The Betty in front of him is another creature entirely, with long, cheerleader legs and the softest of eyes, even if it’s Archie she’s staring at. 

Just as she’s appeared, she’s gone again, positioned on the other half of the field. The game begins, and though he has no reason to stay, he does. 

  
  
  
  


He and Archie find each other after the game. Their conversation is easy, and decidedly focused elsewhere than Ms. Grundy or Jason Blossom. As they walk to Pop’s, Jughead teases him for becoming the jock he always envisioned Archie to be—although good natured and upstanding. Archie asks about Southside High, which he describes with mirth and honest disdain. He even mentions how his mom had wanted him to transfer to Riverdale, but things hadn’t panned out. 

“You still should, Jug. I’d like having you around. The guys from the team are mostly pretty good but nobody knows me like you there. I mean, of course I have Betty, but…” he trails off, vaguely.

“Yeah, Betty. That was her on the field tonight?” He sounds a lot more casual than he feels, like even using her name sounds revealing or illicit. But of course, he presses on, needing to ignore the sensation her name leaves in his mouth.

“You remember her? God, her mom was always so mean, never letting her play when you came over. She’s always been so uptight. You and Betty would have been great friends. She’s… she’s my best friend, Jug. And this week, she told me that she likes me as more than a friend and I freaked out. I don’t… I love her, but I don’t feel that way about her. But I had to break her heart.”

Jughead remembers the other night at Pop’s, that he had been looking for Betty after the dance. “What happened?”

Archie’s gaze gets a little softer, then stiff with guilt. “Veronica Lodge happened. God, it was so stupid. I’m so stupid. Cheryl was trying to mess with Betty, or probably with both of them… I may have kissed Veronica in a closet an hour after I told Betty we couldn’t be more than friends.”

Jughead winces. Archie’s never been the smoothest when it comes to well, anything, but he couldn’t help but cringe at the thought of what that must have done to Betty. He knows he is supposed to tell Archie it will all be okay, that Betty will forgive him, but Jughead isn’t sure Archie even deserves that. But he also doesn’t really know Betty. He’s not really allowed to feel whatever primal protection instincts are surging through him. 

His reaction must not be well contained, as Archie says, “I know. I’m an ass. But I could tell, tonight, that maybe she wants to move past it. At least, I hope so.”

They start to cross the parking lot to Pop’s, and Jughead’s recently installed blonde ponytail radar flashes at the sight of Betty Cooper in the window. “Well, maybe we’re about to find out.” 

Jughead calls out a greeting to Pop, as they enter. The diner car is full and he’s ready to scope out a seat at the counter. He reaches back to ask Archie for an opinion, when his eyes lock on Betty Cooper yet again. Archie stands in a dazed trance, frozen with a look of hope as Betty swivels back to have a silent eyebrow conversation with Veronica, sitting across from her. Betty turns back, but this time, looks decidedly at _him._

“You guys want to join us?” Her voice is like golden syrup, light and warm. Archie is still frozen, so Jughead takes the bait, unsure where his uncharacteristic lightness and confidence come from. 

“Only if you’re treating.” He saunters over to their booth and hops around the bench, climbing over and into the vacancy next to Veronica. “Long time no see, Betty.” An understatement; he’s not sure she remembers seeing him at all.

She smiles back, genuinely, and sighs, “Wow. Jughead Jones.”

“The third,” is all he can manage, taken aback by her clear memory of him and the way she searches his face for hints of the boy she had met, once. 

“Hold up, liar,” Veronica butts in as Archie finally makes his way over to slide onto Betty’s side of the booth. “You said you didn’t know Betty Cooper.”

Betty and Archie’s mouths drop open a little. 

“I said ‘not really.’ Which is true. Hi again, Veronica.”

“You two have met?” Archie sputters.

“Yeah, I found him wandering around Riverdale High after school yesterday. Speaking of which… where did you come from anyway?”

Archie takes over, launching into the story of their lives together, starting with their dads in high school. He weaves in Betty’s cameo and glosses over their parents’ estrangement. 

The night passes in a glow that Jughead can’t explain, except that for the first time in a long time, he feels something peaceful and safe in that booth with these people he barely knows. He doesn’t say much after that, he gets lost in the love that they all have for each other. He wonders if this is all he can ever hope for—but not in a melancholy way. More like he’s addicted to the feeling he has at this moment. Even though he is still Jughead Jones, there might be somewhere he fits, even if it’s just for an evening.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I adore comments and they give me a lot of creative energy, so I'd love to know what you think!
> 
> I went back and forth on Grundy. Easily, she is my least favorite part of season one. But omitting her gets rid of a LOT of the Jason plot initially, and I did not really want to replot that much. Trying to handle it with more intention than the show and name the pedophilia for what it is.
> 
> Chapter 2 is being edited and will be coming soon!


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your lovely feedback. For once I am updating with some kind of quickness? Pls know I'm not always great at this but right now apparently I'm stress writing. 
> 
> An alternative to 1x03: Body Double

_When my mind was turning loose and all my thoughts were turning black  
_ _You shined a light on me and I intend to pay you back_

**_—the avett brothers_ **

* * *

  
  


After the pep rally, Betty begs off Archie’s offer to walk home and snakes her way through downtown with Veronica. Her parents are working late; she’ll stop by the _Register_ to get a ride home. Alice will be pleased to see that she’s not partying with cheerleaders, and that might earn her a little bit of grace.

The girls walk in step, and Betty smiles to herself, thinking they’ve once more found the soft confidence they had walking on the track after their Vixens audition. Veronica is a lot to take in—she whips through more literary references than anyone else in Riverdale (except maybe Jughead, she learned over fries and milkshakes and back and forth jabs about Truman Capote between him and Veronica. _You’re very Breakfast at Tiffany’s,_ he’d jabbed, but Veronica quipped right back, _Then you’re In Cold Blood._ ) There is an intensity to Veronica that Betty feels pulled and repulsed by in equal measure. What kind of person says _it’s not my fault that he doesn’t like you back?_

But Veronica was right, and now Betty wonders why no one had ever been honest with her about Archie before. 

Betty wants to say as much, to firmly clear the air, but Veronica beats her to it. “That guy, Jughead. How does he know Archie? What’s his deal?”

A laugh bubbles up out of nowhere, surprising even Betty. She barely knows him; somehow he takes up more space than was due in her childhood memories, simply because her mom determined him unfit to associate with. “You know, I’m not totally sure. I guess their families were friends? I always had the impression Jughead’s family lived on the South side of Riverdale. My mom didn’t like Polly and I playing with them.” 

Veronica’s brows furrow. “Riverdale is big enough to have sides?”

It’s hard to put delicately; Betty is no expert. “The Southside is, um, has a lower average household income.” 

Veronica smirks at the euphemism, seeing through Betty’s polite discretion. “Jughead poses a strange front. I think he expected me to be scared of him.”

Betty nods. “Some people would be. Like my mom.”

They stop in front of the Pembrooke. “Well, if that’s your mom’s opinion, I’d like to take the opposite stance.”

Betty smiles; they hug goodnight. This is when the peace treaty is signed, for real, no boys interrupting.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Space. Betty told Archie she needed space, so here she was, alone in the Blue and Gold office before school, everything but her own desktop covered in a thin layer of dust. 

Alice would be happy to see her daughter engaged in journalistic pursuits, but mostly, she needed to wrap herself up in something other than her pretense about being over Archie. She needed to be someone other than the pathetic, tender-footed teenage girl she had spent the past few days as: Betty the Unloved. 

_So what if I am._ Almost convinced, she started clearing space on the desks, eager to throw herself full force into organizing her desk, untouched since the end of freshman year when Pepper Smith passed the editorial torch (an unceremonious process, no one else had wanted it). Now it was hers alone.

More than Alice’s manic overhandling and Archie’s guilty sidelong glances, Betty needs this for herself, for the void of darkness that had inched its way into her chest ever since her parents sent Polly away. Ever since the summer had twisted her knowns into unknowns. She needed answers, and not because Cheryl was sinking her claws into her any which way to find out what happened with Polly and Jason. She needed to stop sinking her own claws into her own palms and— 

She takes a deep, shuddering breath and unclenches her fists. 

Thirty minutes later, there is a knock at the door, but Kevin doesn’t wait for a response before bustling in. “Veronica told me I could find you here. Decided to follow after mommy dearest after all?”

Betty rolled her eyes, “Come on Kev. This is not about her.”

“I don’t care what it’s about, I’m here for Betty the Outspoken. What’s the inaugural issue about?”

Betty hadn’t been planning anything in earnest, but it came out: _“The Blue and Gold_ is supposed to be the voice of the people, right? The student body has been trying to reckon with the events of this summer, of Jason…” Her energy continued to build, the pieces stringing together, passion weaving into her voice. 

“I figured maybe I would start there. Not sensationalizing autopsy reports. Not just honoring Jason with moments of silence or weird assemblies led by Cheryl, but real… answers. Investigation.”

“Whoa,” Kevin’s eyes were wide. “Slow down, Nancy Drew. Listen, I’ve got to go, there’s a certain large-mammal monikered football player meeting me for the makings of an excellent after school special.”

_Apparently that’s back on,_ she notes. Betty almost calls after him, “Don’t find anymore dead bodies,” but the image from her mother’s phone resurfaces and she is instead tempted to vomit.

  
  
  
  


By lunchtime, the school is abuzz with the news of Cheryl getting cuffed in Chemistry. Kevin relays the details with typical enthusiasm, though given that his dad is the sheriff with the insider knowledge of the scene, they also quickly learn that the rumor is overblown. Cheryl lied to the police about Jason drowning; she’d seen him safely to Greendale, but she never heard from him again. The hype dwindles, and Betty wonders instead about what this might have to do with Polly.

Archie—a complete non-participant in the Cheryl conversation—stares vacantly across the lawn as Kevin and Veronica discuss her impending date with Chuck Clayton. Betty adds her two cents—Chuck is a player. Veronica quirks her eyebrows; she’s not the kind of girl who lets herself get played. 

“Betty, wait,” Archie calls as they clean up. “Veronica told me you’re trying to write about Jason. For the Blue and Gold.”

Betty nods, gritting her teeth that Archie’s not granting her the one thing she asked him for—space. She glances towards the hallway, impatient. By some miracle, Archie reads her body language. “I just wanted to tell you that you should reach out to Jughead. He’s been writing like, a book, I guess? It’s on this website called the Red and Black.”

Deflating a little at the news that Jughead is already sticking his nose in her project, Betty sighs and mutters a _thanks_ that would not pass muster with Alice Cooper. She’s trying to be her _own_ Lois Lane, thank you very much. Whirling around to head to English, Betty leaves Archie Andrews in his weird, nervous trance. He can be confounded by the football and music dilemma all by himself.

  
  
  


Of course, she reads Jughead’s posts anyway. _Tone of voice,_ she recalls her freshman English teacher writing on one of those giant sticky notes. They pulled quotes from _Catcher in the Rye._ Betty smirks at the snark in Jughead’s line: _People like to say that the death of Jason Blossom changed everything in Riverdale. But certain things, certain traditions never change. Take back to school dances, for instance_ _._ Ms. Haggly would love this. 

The real problem is that _she_ loves this, Jughead’s writing. He doesn’t care about his audience, or his ego, he cares about truth. It’s everything and nothing to do with how Jason’s death has been reported by her own parents; what really happened to him? And what is it doing to all of us?

“What are you looking at?” Veronica pokes her head over Betty’s shoulder, and she feels a wash of embarrassment waterfall down her spine. 

Betty locks her phone, shrugs. “Will you help me redo my ponytail?” She swivels to face the mirror, Veronica standing behind her.

Veronica narrows her eyes, but nods. “You know, this isn’t very good for your hair.” The brushing soothes Betty, her eyes closing briefly. “So um, I’m guessing Archie didn’t tell you about going to Sheriff Keller yet.”

Betty jerks involuntarily. “He _what?”_

Veronica’s hand drops. “Archie was at Sweetwater on the fourth. With his dog, I guess. He heard the gunshot. Gave them a time of day—even though I guess that’s not when they think Jason was killed.”

Staring blankly at their reflection, Betty says, thinking aloud, “Why didn’t he say anything before?”

Veronica shrugs, using her easiest card— _how should the new girl know?_

  
  
  
  
  


There is an email address on the site: redandblack@southside.edu. Betty takes the gamble that he’s the only one running it and sends a message. 

Her mirror image, she thinks. He’s more of a writer, while she’s always been more of an editor, excelling at grammar and depth of ideas, but always missing that one mark—tone of voice. She leaves her school email and her phone number, and then heads home. 

Her dad has already texted to say they’re working late again. **_Come by and help out? We can order Pop’s._** It’s definitely her dad’s bribe; Alice would never condone such a heavy caloric intake on a weeknight. But he’s obviously on the recruitment line for Betty to take the after school job at the _Register_. Not to mention that he’s hiding it too, everything about Polly. Playing good cop, and the adage fits—no cops are good cops. _Both_ her parents are withholding.

The _cops_ thought sends her mind wandering to Cheryl, to Penelope and Clifford Blossom frog-marching her out of school. Cheryl had to know something no one else did; Betty’s been squashing the thought all day that it has anything to do with Polly. Cheryl wouldn’t have given her the nth degree about it at her Vixens audition if she did. 

Veronica ran Vixen’s practice in Cheryl’s stead today; it was more of a dance party than cheerleading, but it was a nice way to blow off steam. 

She’s not even to her street before her phone buzzes. **_Archie warned me you might reach out. I’ll be at Pop’s tonight. -JJ_ **

It’s nearly 6:30—Betty turns on her heel, assuming this constitutes _tonight._

She’s right; the tell-tale gray crown beanie in the window bends away from the light. He doesn’t look up from his computer, so she orders a grilled cheese before sliding into the booth across from him.

The other night he’d flinched when Betty said his name, so she doesn’t do that this time. Veronica was right; he has an outer shell designed to repel other people, an aura that says _don’t bother._ But even now, as he radiates _don’t fuck with me,_ hunched in his seat with his dark undereye circles and black coffee (what teenager drinkes black coffee?), Betty has to compress a smile. Despite all that, his glaring vulnerability is expressing himself more blatantly himself than anyone Betty knows.

(Excepting Veronica, though Betty is starting to think that such a redundant caveat no longer needs to be made.)

“If you leave now,” he drawls, not even looking up, “everyone will just think it was a mistake that you sat down here.”

Betty rolls her eyes, though silently impressed with herself for such a move. “Are you sure it’s _my_ reputation that you’re concerned about? Or you can’t be seen socializing with a cheerleader?”

Jughead’s eyes meet her for the first time, flitting briefly over her practice uniform. He swallows. “We’re not socializing, this is strictly business.” But he’s smiling—smothered and sarcastic, but it’s there. Betty doesn’t question why it’s such a victory. 

“I have a scoop.”

He drains the coffee. It’s not just a prop. “Good for you, Nancy Drew.”

“Well, I don’t _have_ to share with you. I could write about it in my _own_ school newspaper. But it seems we’re both understaffed. I wanted to propose… that you come and write for the _Blue and Gold.”_ Betty clasps her hands, like a plea. It’s corny, and Jughead doesn’t look amused.

“Why would I do that?”

Betty sighs. “Because you’re writing for a Southside audience that doesn’t care about a rich boy ending up dead, no matter how grizzly. I’ve read the comments, Jug. But Jason’s death _changed_ Riverdale. People don’t want to admit that but it’s true. We all feel it. Nothing this bad was ever supposed to happen here.”

To her surprise, Jughead closes his laptop and meets her gaze dead on. His eyes are brighter than she remembered the other night. “A lot of bad things happen here. But it takes a dead rich kid for anyone to admit it.”

Fair, she thinks. “That’s why I need your voice. I think we could get to the heart of this thing.”

“I don’t know.” He furrows his brow, but the smile is playing at the corners of his mouth again. “That sounds like me giving up complete freedom and acquiring an—editor. One who moonlights as a cheerleader, no less.” 

Her meal comes, and Jughead snatches a fry before Betty can slap it out of his hand. “I’m not moonlighting as anything. I need this. I need to know why, and my _parents_ are not out for answers. They’re out for blood. Blossom blood.”

After a few beats—and another fry—Jughead sighs. “Fine. I’m in. _But,_ I have conditions.”

“Of course,” Betty allows.

“We’ll republish under the _Blue and Gold,_ but I get headline credit. No one else gets brought on without approval from both of us. You get veto power over anything, but that won’t stop me from posting it back on my own site. Deal?”

Feigning time to consider, Betty bites into her sandwich, relishing the combination of butter and gooey cheese and perfectly griddled bread. “Deal. But my first assignment isn’t actually about Cheryl. Everyone knows about the gunshot on July 4th, and _now_ everyone knows Jason’s time of death wasn’t until another week later. But no one is talking about the other person who was at the river on the fourth.”

“Dilton Doiley. The survival scout leader.”

Betty blinks. “You know him.”

Jughead shrugs. “We were in the scouts together. Way back in the day.”

Obviously suppressing a smile, Betty teases, “Wow. Imagining you in a little khaki uniform is…” 

Jughead turns scarlet. “I’ll talk to Dilton. We can check in tomorrow. I’m usually here, except some Saturdays. I work at the Twilight. Anyway, you can get back to your pyramids.”

But Betty doesn’t leave until she’s finished her sandwich, or until they build out the basic website; he’s quick with that stuff, which helps. In fact, by the time she leaves, they’re almost the only people in the diner anymore. 

  
  
  


Betty’s still living in the bubble of her evening, distracted from trying to choose the notebooks she needs by the excitement burning in her fingertips at the thought of publishing a story on Dilton’s witness account later this week. When Kevin pounces, demanding “How was the date? Tell us _everything,”_ it takes Betty a beat to realize that Kevin isn’t talking to her, and then to quell the blush in her cheeks and the incredulous _date?_ all too ready on the tip of her tongue. 

Veronica purses her lips, coy as ever. “He’s not a very strong conversational partner, but Chuck isn’t entirely useless.” Kevin’s eyes widen with delight.

At the same moment, Ginger breezes by, brandishing a phone screen in their direction. “Of course the new girl is a slut. Only here for one week and you’re dishing out sticky maples to the football captain, Veronica?”

Betty blinks, confused. Veronica’s brow furrows, snatching the phone out of Kevin’s already typing fingers. _“What_ is a sticky maple?”

Kevin’s face morphs from stunned to pained. “Um, exactly what it sounds like? Are you saying you didn’t—”

“Of _course_ she didn’t, Kev,” Betty interjects, but then cringes at herself. “I mean, just, not that it matters if you—”

Her fumble doesn’t even seem to have registered with Veronica, whose eyes grow darker and darker as she stares at the image. “I will cut the brakes on his souped up phallic symbol!” she screeches, attracting a few more stares than she was already getting.

Betty doesn’t need to look; the cartoonish image is more than enough. “Listen,” Betty urges, desperate to show Veronica she meant her vow of friendship. “I’ll expose him in the paper. This is slut shaming! _”_

Veronica seethes, and she seems to grow three inches in stature. “Now is _not_ time for you to be such a good girl, Betty. I don’t follow rules. I make them, and when necessary, I break them. If you’re ready, come along, but I’m going full dark, no stars.”

She’s already halfway down the hall before Betty decides it’s probably best if she follows. Warning bell be damned, Veronica on a war path should not be left unattended. Without looking, Veronica wrenches an arm back and grabs Betty by the elbow, dragging her into the boys locker room in one swift motion, before Betty has any ability to resist.

Nothing prepares her for the steamy congregation of damp boy bodies and the conflagration of scents that arise in such a small space: layers of sweat and body spray and more sweat and _more_ body spray. Then she whacks _into_ someone.

“Betty? Veronica? What—” 

Clamping a head over her brow, Betty avoids ever seeing Archie in whatever state of undress he’s in, focusing only on Veronica, who stalks up to Chuck, wielding a pointer finger worthy of trepidation. She doesn’t even hear half of Veronica’s rant, but something shrill and vicious manages to escape her own throat— _you can’t go around treating girls like that._ But when Chuck rounds the lewdness back on her, Betty cowers again.

“You’re in bulldog territory now,” Chuck declares, a closing statement, and Betty sees Veronica’s face shut down. Something clicks there, and Betty’s stomach sinks to witness it.

Betty’s worst suspicions are confirmed after school when Veronica texts: **_the comments keep getting worse._ **She’d promised not to read them, to go home and take a bath and tell her mom. Meanwhile, Betty’s been doing her own version of self-care: research. 

The phone rings three times before Veronica answers. “Betty, it’s _bad._ It’s people are obviously googling my father, making Madoff puns—”

Scoffing, Betty interrupts. “V, I’ve found almost a dozen other girls who had something like this happen and they’re willing to go on the record. And get this: Ethel Muggs says they have some kind of awful playbook where Chuck and other football boys tally this shit up. Assigning girls _points.”_

The line is silent, so Betty panics and presses on. “We can go to Weatherbee! This will certainly get Chuck kicked off the football team. Maybe suspended.”

Veronica’s voice comes through, quiet but fierce. “Not without proof.”

Betty checks the clock on the wall in the _Blue and Gold_ office _._ She needs to run by Pop’s to hear what Jughead’s got on Dilton Doiley, but if she’s quick, she can meet Veronica in an hour. 

  
  
  


Even though she’d kill for a plate of onion rings, there is no time for snacking. Disappointingly, Jughead nurses only his perpetual cup of black coffee. The door chime is still ringing when she throws herself into his booth. “Sorry, I have to dish and dash. Veronica and I are on a bit of a reconnaissance mission.”

Jughead’s eyebrows rise, and Betty pulls up the photo. He grimaces. _“The Scarlet Letter_ is less irrelevant than high school kids are willing to admit.”

Betty chuckles, the bleak but on-the-nose comment catching up with her humorless day of tracking down girls willing to go on the record about Chuck Clayton. If she’d found ten, Betty has to imagine the true number is double that. 

“Dilton,” she prompts, waving her hand in a harried, get-to-it manner. 

Jughead nods after a blip of weighted hesitation, like he’s not sure they should just move the conversation on. She didn’t bring him on to fight her battles; Betty’s relieved he decides to leave it alone. “I coaxed it out of a junior scout that Dilton Doiley was having his troop do _target practice_ that morning. He shot the gun. It was a coincidence.”

Betty sighs, not even possessing the bandwidth for disappointment. “We’ll need to talk to him directly. I can schedule a meeting with him for…” she trails off, swiping for her phone’s calendar and promptly distracted by Veronica’s **_on my way!_** text. 

Jughead clears his throat. 

“Sorry, my brain is fried. I’m trying to think about where we could find proof of the playbook.”

“Playbook?” he scrunches his brow, and Betty is momentarily distracted by the grumpy look, remembering it exactly from playing kickball with him and Archie once, a long time ago.

“Chuck has been up to this for a while. There’s a point system for preying on girls. And I need to figure out where it might be.”

Jughead frowns deeply. “Have you checked the tenth circle of hell?”

On the brink of retorting _there is no tenth circle of hell,_ someone coughs over Betty’s shoulder. Jughead’s grumpy look returns. 

It’s Trev Brown, Valerie’s brother. “Hey Betty, um, sorry to bother you. Ethel told me about what you’re looking for. I saw it once when I was on the football team—it’s actually why I quit.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, Betty sees Jughead roll his eyes and mouth _a saint._ She shoots a dirty look at him before wheeling back to Trev. “Oh my god, thank you! You mean the playbook? It’s still in the locker room?”

Trev smiles, nodding, pleased to be helpful. It’s endearing, even if it reminds Betty a little too much of herself. “In Chuck’s locker.”

The front door jangles as Veronica throws it open, stalking furiously in her direction. “I’m going scorched earth on these privileged, despicable miscreants.” Betty watches Jughead’s eyebrow fly up, and somehow she knows he’s about to make a comment about pots and kettles, but he just purses his lips, perhaps curbed once more in the span of mere minutes. Perhaps they are both taking her role as editor to heart.

  
  


Hidden in plain sight. 

The notebook could be anything—old, battered, spiral-bound one-subject. Probably purchased as a five subject set, intended for math or writing. Veronica’s manicured nails trace the cover, like she expects some kind of hex emblazoned on the cover.

Betty tries to hold the flashlight steady, but her arm trembles. Veronica flips it open There are a few full pages, single spaced front and back, as if they expected their game of conquests to continue infinitely. Names jump out at them— _Ethel Muggs, big girl, 7 points._ Veronica’s name is the most recent— _New girl. 9 points._ Betty feels rage rise like bile at the back of her throat. 

Veronica snaps it shut again, exhaling a shuddering breath. “Do you think Archie knows about this?”

Betty had asked herself the same question, and maybe she was indoctrinated to believe the best in him, because her reply is easy. “No. He knew you were going on that date with Chuck. He would have said something. Besides, if Archie had hooked up with a girl, I would have figured it out.”

Still, she’s unsettled by the thought, and takes the notebook back, skimming for the initials AA next to each line. “See, his initials aren’t anywhere—”

Betty freezes when she sees the entry: _Polly Cooper, shy girl. 9 points. —JB_

Veronica’s eyes follow where Betty’s fingers have landed. “Betty. I’m—god, I’m so sorry.” 

_I need girls with fire,_ Cheryl had snapped at her Vixens audition. Inside, Betty must look like scorched earth from all she holds in, all she stamps out, all she forgives. But Cheryl was wrong; Betty has fire. She’s just been stowing it deep and hot for a long, long time.

Her hands sting, slicked with a rivulets of blood where a fingernail has driven too deep into the scabs. Betty pulls her shirt down to cover her palms. “I’m ready, V. All dark no stars.”

  
  
  
  


In the heat of her rage and the darkness of her tunnel vision, Betty doesn’t think twice about her role in the plan. She dons Polly’s denim crop top and pink suede skirt, slides the red lipstick on like a mask. It feels good, especially after her mother violently swiped it off the first time. _Stick to pink perfection._ Betty grits her teeth and wonders what would happen if she turned her palms face up. _I’m all red inside, mom._

Smoothing the soft texture of her skirt and tightening her ponytail, she enters Pop’s, her smile feigning flirtation. Betty’s not sure how Veronica ensured Chuck would be here at this precise time on a Wednesday night, but the promise is delivered. 

He glances up, intrigued, a dog with a bone. Frankly, deep underneath the character she’s playing, Betty is surprised that it works. More bare skin and hungry eyes sell Chuck Clayton on a prude sophomore—that’s all it takes? She plays on his taunts from yesterday. _I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to be bad._ She wonders, how many points is _a good girl_ worth? 

When he tries to throw her by dropping her sister’s name, a flicker of something passes over her face, but Betty doesn’t bite. “Tomorrow night—” she starts, but then there’s a throat clearing right beside them, a lanky shadow in the neon haze. 

“Hey, um, sorry.” Betty’s head whips to Jughead’s voice, to him standing sheepishly next to the table, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. “Betty, could I uh, talk to you really quick?” He’s all but rocking on his heels, and Betty weighs the cost of dismissing him in this moment, when surely he has no idea of her greater designs. 

Chuck interjects, “We’re having a conversation, Donnie Darko, I think you can scram. And don’t peddle your drugs here, Pop’s is good people.”

Any hesitation evaporates, and Betty glares at Chuck as she stands and grabs Jughead by the arm, dragging him outside. If Jughead is jealous (unlikely, given how nervous he appears), or trying to protect her, Betty will rip him to shreds. 

Jughead wrenches his arm back and stalks off to the side of the diner, under the glow of the Chock’lit Shoppe sign. Betty follows, annoyance brewing. “What do you want? I’m kind of on a mission, Jug, and you almost just _totally_ blew it for me.”

Jughead sighs, shoulders heaving exaggeratedly. “I thought you were going to write an exposé.”

The tug in her stomach feels different than the shame Alice laid on thick in the vanity mirror; the exhaustion in his tone hits more like disappointment. Jughead Jones doesn’t really know her, but he’s perceptive. He’s a writer. He can judge when someone is playing too far out of their character. 

Even though she means to defend herself, the words come out broken. “It’s right there, Jug, in the notebook. Jason Blossom _hurt_ my sister, and now she’s convalescing at some undisclosed location where I can’t see her or talk to her. She _deserves_ justice, just as much as we deserve to know what happened to Jason. And I’m—we—are the only ones who seem to care about any of it.” Betty deflates, winding her arms around her bare waist. 

Jughead doesn’t move, and Betty can’t decide if she wants him to. “But if this is really about Polly, drugging Chuck Clayton isn’t going to solve anything.”

Her mouth gapes. “How did you know?”

Another big sigh. “Veronica called me.”

“Why you?” She doesn’t mean it to sound demeaning. It’s more that Betty’s not sure why he would bother. 

Jughead scuffs his sneakers on the pavement, head down. “She said you aren’t talking to Archie and someone needed to talk you down.”

Betty nods, trying to accept the practicality; Jughead seemed to always be at Pop’s. Even though they aren’t close— _friends_ doesn’t sound like the right term—Jughead has a way of cutting through the drama and the noise, standing on the outside looking in. Once more, it makes her feel seen, exposed in a deeper sense than her short skirt. 

Perhaps this is the moment where they accept that they’re friends now.

“I should go find her,” Betty says, granting him a grateful exit point. 

Jughead jerks his head towards the motorcycle next to them. “I’ll take you. Those shoes don’t look like they’re made for long distances.”

Betty opens her mouth to defend the comfort of her wedge heels, but her own thought interrupts. “That’s yours?”

Jughead simply nods and hands her a helmet. _Southside,_ she remembers, smothering the deeply embedded rippled of fear that her parents implanted. _Two blocks south of Main is the town limits of Riverdale as far as we’re concerned, Elizabeth._

“Here, you’re gonna freeze,” Jughead insists, taking off the flannel shirt tied around his waist. His eyes pause for a moment on her shirt, but reel back to her face so immediately that Betty can’t assess what he’s thinking, if he likes it, or whether he would make it obvious if he _did,_ given the events of the past few days. It might not be a ploy to posture himself as better, but he is, certainly, _better_ than almost any teenage boy she knows. 

The flannel feels a little threadbare at the elbows, but warm. It seems intimate, learning what Jughead smells like. It’s hard to straddle the bike in such a short skirt, and Betty says a brief prayer that no one recognizes her under the helmet. Thankfully, her parents and almost everyone they know are at the Mayor’s soireé. Betty gathers Jughead’s coat in her fists on either sides of his hips, but as they jerk forward out of the parking lot, Betty reaches all the way around his waist, letting out a yelp of surprise at the motion. 

It’s nice, she thinks, to be able to hug him in thanks. Betty doubts it’s something he would otherwise allow.

  
  
  
  
  


Smithers lets Betty in, and Veronica immediately engulfs her in a hug. (The Pembrooke is as beautiful as Betty’s always imagined, the subtle signs of weathering appear much more charming than decrepit.)

“I would have sent Archie, but he’s grounded,” Veronica explains, but then her eyes widen with suspicion. “Did he give you a shirt?”

Betty realizes she never took the flannel off. Jughead hadn’t asked. “It was cold on the motorcycle.”

_“Motorcycle?”_ Veronica screeches. “What 16-year-old has a motorcycle?”

Betty shrugs. There is a prominent Southside biker gang; the culture goes a little unquestioned. Maybe if she’d grown up there, Betty would have worked on bikes with her dad. Besides, it was hardly the most scandalous thing on the Southside; it was probably more worth noting what the motorcycle implied about Jughead’s family. But Betty feels a knee-jerk protective instinct towards Jughead, so she doesn’t explain.

Veronica leads them into the kitchen, pouring Betty a cup of tea without asking if she wants one. “I know I wanted revenge, Betty. But I was wrong to call you a good girl for trying to steer me away from that.”

Opening her mouth to dismiss the apology, Veronica holds up a hand, blazing on. “You were right. We have everything we need for a takedown. You _are_ a good girl, and I don’t mean that in a gross, meathead points-system kind of way. You’re smart and just and _good,_ and I would do better to listen to you sometimes.” She’s earnest and pleading, the same way she’d been at Pop’s when they made their vow.

Betty smiles, touched to feel that Veronica knows exactly what she’d needed to hear. “Well, then we have an exposé to write.”

  
  
  
  


Weatherbee summons Betty to his office mid-day, a chorus of _oooh_ echoing through her math class when she’s called over the loudspeaker. Veronica tags along as escort, despite their teacher’s protests. Weatherbee sighs with displeasure about the exhaustive unfolding drama, but there is no wrist slapping—instead, he thanks Betty for reviving _The Blue and Gold_ and hopes she’ll recruit a more robust staff. 

Chuck is ceremoniously marched out of the building by his own father, suspended for the remainder of the week. Whispers spread through the hallways that he’s kicked off the team, and now Reggie Mantle will be vying for the captains’ spot. Betty rolls her eyes as Veronica clucks, “You’d think this is Rome. I’m surprised no one poisoned Caesar sooner.” 

During lunch, Kevin badgers them for details in between huffy sighs about leaving him out of the drama, so Betty adopts her smoothing-things-over tone and promises Pop’s on Friday so they can debrief the whole thing. 

She’ll be spending a lot of time there, Betty considers, unless she and Jughead decide on another neutral ground. The library might be a more convincing place to disappear to on weekends. Her parents are almost never home at dinner time anymore, but Alice might try to compensate over the weekend with some kind of family outing. Then again—school always came first, and the Cooper family outings had diminished to almost nothing once Betty came home from her summer internship to find Polly gone.

When the bell rings at the end of the day, she checks her phone for updates. Betty took responsibility for luring Dilton to _The Blue and Gold_ office, making something up about wanting him to write a survivalist column, but Jughead is the one who’s been doing the legwork on Dilton and she doesn’t want to start without him. She takes her time at her locker at the end of the day, backtracking to English to ask questions about their first essay assignment.

When Betty gives up on hearing from Jughead, she heads to the office. Dilton is already slouched against the door when Betty arrives at the newspaper office.

“Listen, I have a troop meeting at four-thirty, so—”

Betty clenches her jaw to avoid appearing annoyed, instructing him to sit and then filling time with her spiel about the paper. It’s been almost forty minutes since school let out. _Where is he?_ “Excuse me, Dilton, my mom’s calling, I’ll be right back.”

Stepping out into the hall, Betty punches her phone buttons, a nervous tremor rippling through that this has everything to do with her vulnerability last night. But there he is, slinking down the hallway in a green sweater, fiddling with the leather bracelets on his wrist. Involuntarily, she blushes, thinking about waking up with his flannel bunched up and clutched to her chest. She hadn’t brought it back.

“You’re late,” she snaps, compensating for the humiliating thought of pressing her nose into the plaid and memorizing the smell.

He heaves a sigh. “The bus was late and I had to take care of some things.”

Betty bites her lip. She’d bared a little of her soul last night, and yet Jughead remains swathed in so many layers, literally and figuratively. “He’s inside,” she says instead, and the corners of his mouth turn up. Betty mirrors his expression. _Let’s get him._

  
  


“If you publish that story my life will be ruined. I’ll be banished from the Adventure Scouts and charged with a misdemeanor. So… what if I have a better story?”

Jughead throws her a dark look, a _your call, boss._ Betty frowns comically, her lip outing out. The whole this is so ridiculous, what other choice do they have?

“If I tell you what I know… _promise_ the gunshot stays between us?”

Betty can’t see his face, but she can tell Jughead wants to lay one into Dilton for all of it. She swings around to the front of the desk. “You have our word. As journalists.” Jughead raises his eyebrows but swings his notebook closed. 

Dilton leans forward. “I saw something at Sweetwater River. Something no one else saw. _Ms. Grundy’s car,_ by the river’s edge. She was there, too.”

It takes a beat for Betty to connect the dots. Dilton was at the river, training the scouts. Cheryl, crouched on the banks, drenched. Archie and Vegas—improbably. And now Ms. Grundy?

She hears her own question to Veronica. _Why didn’t he say anything before?_

But it’s Jughead’s face that seals it, the stony set of his jaw and blankness in his eyes. They’re both putting it together: Archie’s sudden interest in music. The cryptic story about the fourth, confessed to the Sheriff only after Cheryl is interrogated. Archie would have been eaten up with guilt, but he’d keep a secret, too. A boy whose loyalty knows no bounds.

Jughead dismisses Dilton with a jerk of his head, but when Betty tries to make eye contact, tries to ask without speaking _is this what I think this is?_ Jughead is already turned around, gathering his things. “I have to run to work. I’ll text you later.”

She’s left alone, burdened with everything she never wanted to know.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! eternally blessed and motivated by any and all comments!! Right now I'm planning to alternate POVs by chapter but also... we'll see what happens.


	3. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a retelling of 1x04, the last picture show. thank you all for indulging this project! it's been very soothing to return to in between other updates of other fics!

_I've stopped my dreaming  
_ _I won't do too much scheming  
_ _These days, these days  
_ _These days I sit on cornerstones  
_ _And count the time in quarter tones to ten  
_ _Please don't confront me with my failures  
_ _I had not forgotten them_

**_—these days, nico_ **

  
  


* * *

After Dilton’s revelation in newspaper office _,_ Jughead puts as much space between himself and Betty Cooper as he can stand. 

It’s not what he _wants_ to do. Betty had become this gravitational pull away from everything he wanted to avoid—FP, the Serpents, and anything connected to them, which was everything. Now, he’s either sending himself into a very lonely orbit, or hurtling back to the universe he’s been running from. 

And, well, there is something about Betty Cooper that dulls the sharp pain of existence. She makes him think that this narrative of disappointment and mess, of false promise, might not be the only one out there. Something that leads him to daydream about gently pulling her ponytail out of its holder during English class. 

The walk to the Twilight is long but easily made by cutting through a network of empty lots and alleys. Betty calls him only once, five minutes after he leaves the Blue and Gold. Jughead doesn’t save a lot of contacts because he’s lived so long from prepaid phone to prepaid phone that it’s not worth saving more than his most frequent callers. Betty, apparently, is now one of them.

He lets it ring out, wondering if he has even set up a voicemail on this particular twenty dollar brick phone. 

It’s not that he hasn’t wanted to inform anyone else about the actual child predator lurking in the hallways of Riverdale High. It’s the prospect of the fallout: if he tells Fred, there will be a parental reckoning, a discovery of his temporary living situation, an intolerable intervention involving the over-tired part-time social worker at Southside High. If Betty tells _her_ parents, they’ll discover she’s been hanging out with a low-life kid and ban them from working together. 

And right now, their partnership is all he has going for him. Estranged by choice from family, from Serpents, working on this with Betty feels like Jughead’s only tether to society. It feels selfish to look at it this way, of course, knowing that Archie is probably not the first of Grundy’s underage conquests, nor likely to be the last if they stay silent. Perhaps, on top of everything else, it just feels unfair for this to fall on his plate.

Trudging around the corner to the giant drive-in lot, Jughead spies the caretaker hanging up the message, **_last night Saturday_** _,_ and his heart sinks so deep into the pit of his stomach that he can’t feel anything else. 

_Closing soon_ has been hanging all summer; Jughead knows all too well that Riverdale is selling out, and that the Southside Serpents are getting paid to rescind their symbolic hold on this delineated turf. Just adding to the history of being bought out, bribed, and stolen from—Jughead can already hear Toni’s grandpa ranting about it, can already see Sweet Pea rolling his eyes about it. He wonders if Thomas Topaz would be the same level of moral purist as Jughead about all of it. These aren’t Uktena tribal lands any more—it is ultimately up to Mayor McCoy who wins the bid for the land. But the Serpents have supposedly protected it for a long, long time. 

Still, even though he’d been warned, the finality cuts deep. Jughead finds himself gulping back tears. The projection booth wasn’t going to hold up as a winter shelter without a space heater anyway, but it’s been a home to him all the same. 

The caretaker teeters down the ladder after a few minutes. Jughead stands frozen. “Anonymous buyer is closing the deal next week. Last picture show on Saturday—you can pick it, kid.”

He doesn’t say anything about the sleeping bag or the hot plate in the projector booth. There’s no need. They both know that _anonymous buyer_ means developers, which means the projection booth will be razed to the ground. 

  
  
  
  


By lunchtime tomorrow, Jughead has been stewing in his frustration about everything: the Twilight, Geraldine Grundy, and his own miserable avoidance of Betty Cooper, who he cannot stop thinking about. She must be obsessing, writing long odes in a lock-bound diary (she seemed like that type), thinking about how quickly their lives morphed into an episode of Dateline. She has texted him several times:

**_Please tell me you’re thinking what I’m thinking_ **

**_I’m not crazy, right?_ **

**_Jug, what are we gonna do?_ **

He tries not to think about the way her lips purse, forming themselves around his name.

“Who pissed in your Cheerios _today,_ dude?” Sweet Pea crows, swinging a leg over the bench. Jughead chews aggressively on his mediocre chicken sandwich in response and Toni whacks Sweet Pea on the arm. 

“The Twilight sold, dipshit. Satuday is the last night,” she reminds him. Jughead casts a diagnostic look at Toni and Pea. Did she let slip that he sleeps there? Sweet Pea doesn’t live in Sunnyside; it’ll take him longer to notice.

“So this has nothing to do with the blonde?” Sweet Pea levels him with a weighty look, a don’t-even-try-it narrowing of the eyes.

Jughead swallows and takes a drag from his second carton of milk before frowning. ‘The Blonde’ makes him think of _American Graffiti,_ which could be a good selection for Saturday, but he knows what Sweet Pea really means. “I’m working with her on something.” Jughead does his best to sound disinterested.

He doesn’t want to share details, he _likes_ that working with Betty is a sacred thing from the rest of his life. 

Toni, as usual, seems to track the extra tense hunch of his shoulders and kisses her teeth, but doesn’t pry any further. He wonders, vaguely, if Toni and Betty might get along _too_ well, should they ever meet. _Why would they ever meet?_

Instead, he launches into a rant about gentrification that makes them both nod and hum. “Another nail in the coffin of Riverdale,” he drawls. Jughead doesn’t tell them that he’s been obsessing about how to save it, how to find out who the anonymous buyer is and levy some kind of land rights lawsuit. Fuck over his dad, the mayor, blow the lid off of all of it without getting crushed under the weight of the public, private, and elicit sectors of Riverdale uniting in a trifecta of corruption.

But in the end, Jughead knows this is really about where the fuck he’s going to sleep at night. It’s about the fact that FP Jones has now, indirectly, taken away another roof over his head. And he almost says this, too— _My own damn dad signed this land away for a cut of the check._

And unlike Sweet Pea and Toni, Jughead knows where that cut goes. 

  
  
  
  


In a comical act of masochism, Jughead avoids Betty’s three messages for twenty four hours, yet plants himself in his booth at Pop’s right after school, knowing she’ll eventually walk through the door. 

When she does walk through the door—and Jughead will deny that he checks every time the chime rings—Veronica and another boy trail behind her. It should be relieving that she’s distracted by her other friends, but his stomach sinks with disappointment.

But then she plants her gaze on him, immediately, and Jughead gulps, reminding himself to avoid ever becoming Betty’s investigative target. By the time she reaches him, her gaze looks a little foggy again, the same clouded daze he’d left her in after the interrogation with Doiley.

“Do you mind if we…?” she trails off, a little hesitant. 

The other boy catches up and thrusts out a hand. “Kevin Keller.”

Lord, the sheriff’s son? Jughead looks down. “Jughead Jones.”

Seeming to note an edge to the exchange, Betty quickly takes the seat beside Jughead. “What are you up to?” It’s pointed, but hidden under a layer of perkiness. Veronica and Kevin take the other side of the booth less eagerly. He wonders how much Betty had coached them to behave.

“I’m trying to uncover who bought the Twilight, but I’m not exactly in the right rooms for that.”

Betty nods, consolingly. “My dad told me about that this morning. I think he and my mom were trying to figure out the same thing about the whole _anonymous buyer_ business.”

Jughead scoffs. “The Twilight Drive-in should mean something to us. We should be trying to save it.” He did not say this at lunch, to his Southside friends. This audience might have more weight, more ideas, more optimism about petitions to save it as a cultural icon.

“No offense,” Veronica interjects, to which Jughead tries not to take immediate offense. “This town is bewilderingly archaic and it might not be my place to ask, but who exactly goes to a drive-in movie theater anymore?”

Betty stares blankly at the milkshake that Veronica’s mom, clad in the classic diner uniform, drops in front of her. Strawberry—of course. Jughead tries to be reminded that Veronica is no longer a Park Avenue princess, but it’s hard not to snap back.

In that beat of hesitation, Kevin answers for him. “Um, people who want to buy crack?”

Jughead grits his teeth. “Cinephiles. And car enthusiasts, right Betts?” He can hear himself going off the rails, he’s begging her to reel him in, but her head pops up, distracted by a fingerful of whipped cream.

“Totally,” she says from ten thousand mind-years away.

Scowling deeper, Jughead carries on. “But the town didn’t invest in it, so it’s gone downhill, and now they’re making a killing by sloughing it off on some developer to build condos and price other families out of the Southside.”

Kevin and Veronica appear properly scolded, taking long draws from their sodas. Shifting the subject, they start intervening with ideas about the last movie pick. Veronica doesn’t get a vote as far as Jughead is concerned—he wasn’t going to go out on Audrey Hepburn. 

“Betty, your choices?” Kevin prompts.

Betty jerks back to life. _Just thinking._ A humor colors her voice, as she offers, “Rebel Without a Cause.”

God, it’s stupid how perfect she is. He curls into himself, trying to stamp out the full bodied wash of warmth he feels about Betty Cooper, turning his head so that she knows he approves. She smiles softly back, and he feels doubly relaxed to feel that this interaction is an exception to the clearly prevalent stress of Archie’s teacher problem.

  
  
  
  


He’s picking at his burger when Kevin announces, “That’s an odd combo of people.”

Betty’s head swivels, the whip of her ponytail so fast that Jughead feels a gust of air fan across his face. Grundy—the demure pedophile, Fred—the unsuspecting father, and Archie—shame faced, guilty as sin.

Jughead sees Betty’s eyes zero in and panics, grappling for her shoulder. “No, Betty, don’t—”

“Be right back.”

_Shit._ Now Kevin was watching closely; Jughead already has the impression that he’s the sort to glom on at the mere whiff of drama. Jughead relaxes a fraction when Betty drags Archie outside. The music teacher would not be arrested in Pops tonight, thank god. Still, he’s biting his thumbnail reflexively, not missing the long glance Archie sent him across the diner car.

To his knowledge, Betty and Archie haven’t talked much at all since the confession-of-feelings fallout. She’s level headed a lot of the time, Jughead knows. But he’s also seen the collected, rational facade slip into something a little wild, reckless. 

What he’s really bracing for is for Archie to say _Did Jug tell you?_

He didn’t. But should he have? Probably. And the instinct might be right; Betty recently demonstrated her ruthlessness towards abusers. And why hadn’t he? 

Because he and Archie were friends again? Doesn’t that mean he should be protecting his friend? Or at the very least, telling the person who cares about Archie most? (Maybe he doesn’t like thinking about her like that, except when it reminds him that Betty Cooper has an immense capacity to care.)

Jughead hunches in the corner, too upset to look or try to read lips. 

“What is this about? Is it about me?” Veronica worries. 

Jughead winces, peeking out the blinds again. “I have a hunch and— _no._ Let it go.” He rolls his eyes at Veronica’s conceit. 

“You’re you, and I’m me. I’m going out there.” His stomach churns. Impulsively, he plucks the strawberry off Betty’s shake and eats it. 

Jughead and Kevin are left, staring blankly at each other, and Jughead decides he prefers the window. Betty waves her arms, upset. _Illegal._ God, they definitely knew. He should go out there, even though every bone in his body protests the thought of confrontation. This would all start going to shit the same week he became even more homeless. _Perfect._

Tires squeal, a station wagon careens into the parking lot. “Oh boy, Mama Coop is here,” Kevin says, ducking down. On reflex, Jughead follows suit, but stays down at the glimpse of something else unmistakable:

FP’s motorcycle. 

  
  
  


Thankfully, Jughead’s dad never appears inside, and Pop gives him a ‘mistake’ order with a soft smile. “You know, Jug, I could use another line cook. After school, flexible hours. Shift meal, all that.”

Jughead swallows his first bite with more pain than relief. He needs the money, certainly, but he’s not sure he can juggle something else right now, even though it would take some other stresses away. “I’ll think about it,” he chokes out. The burger feels extra heavy in his stomach, even though he’s still starving when he skirts the back way out of the parking lot, over the train tracks, and back to the projection booth to sleep.

He’s got a pretty good setup; he read a lot of survivalist novels as a kid, and this was nothing even close to that. There’s a burner with a coffee pot; he has a microwave in the Red and Black office at school for the occasional ramen noodle cup. He keeps a gallon of water on hand for drinking and cleaning, a handful of dishes. A fan, for the stagnant heat of summer, pointed towards his cot. A lamp, for reading or last minute homework scrawling. 

The cot squeaks, but Jughead either sleeps like the dead or not at all. He pulls _In Cold Blood_ from his book stack, wanting to double check a portion that he and Veronica argued about (he’s definitely right), but doesn’t get further than cracking the well-worn paperback spine before thinking about Betty’s face, glowing in the light of the parking lot. Crestfallen, then incredulous. He doesn’t envy Archie, but he’d also feel grateful to know someone loved him like that, enough to yell and cry and stomp away.

He should text her back—the message is open and his thumbs start typing when his phone lights up with another number he’s barely managed to save: Archie.

“Hey, Jug,” Archie breathes, his voice high and anxious.

“Hey,” Jughead replies, wary.

“So, uh. I guess Betty knows?” The fact that Archie manages to make this a seeming innocent question after the scene outside of Pop’s baffles Jughead. 

“What do you want, Arch? This can’t stay a secret. It’s not okay.”

Archie sighs, twice. “Just—you and Betty aren’t gonna write about me or Geraldine on that website, right?”

Jughead rolls his eyes, wishing Archie could hear how ridiculous he sounds. “Maybe you should be more worried that your teacher could get arrested.”

“That _is_ what I’m worried about, Jughead.”

“Well maybe it shouldn’t be! Listen,” Jughead sighs, not wanting to admit the truth about to come out of his mouth. “If there was even an iota of a chance that bringing down Grundy would cause harm to you in anyway, Betty wouldn’t do it, right?”

Another boyish sigh. “She’s not exactly president of my fan club right now, Jug.”

Jughead is momentarily distracted by the thought of Betty tearing up a poster of _The Archie Andrews Fan Club._ It’s decidedly his new favorite fantasy.

“What do you want to happen here, Arch?”

“I don’t know I just… I want to hold onto what we have for as long as I can.”

The sentiment makes Jughead want to wretch, but he takes a deep breath. They need to keep Archie calm. Whatever happens with Grundy, it will be better if Archie’s name stays out of it, unmarred. Besides, he can relate to the sentiment, even if deeply misplaced.

“Yeah, I’m trying to hang onto something a _lot_ older than me, too.” Jughead stares out the small window to the Twilight Drive-in sign. 

Archie ignores the jab. “Just, I know you’re working on stuff with her right now, so if Betty mentions doing anything crazy, can you just let me know so I can put a stop to it?”

The idea of Archie stopping the immutable force of Betty Cooper’s will makes Jughead swallow a laugh. “Sure,” he lies. 

  
  
  
  


Around midnight, Jughead works up the words to text Betty. **_I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I was kind of overwhelmed but that’s not a v good excuse. Maybe lets just lay low for now until we can make a plan?_ **

Even though he’d only succeeded at staying away from her for a day, Jughead longs to make sure they’re okay. Their friendship still feels like this tenuous, fragile experiment that he’s desperate not to fuck up. Archie might take Betty’s derision with his shoulders braced, but Jughead can’t imagine falling from such grace. 

She responds right back, **_I’m lying low._ **Then, a minute later, 

**_And I understand, it’s ok jug_ **

**_And I’m really sorry about the drive-in. Not just for you, but like, in general. It sucks :(_ **

Lamely, he responds with **_thx._** Betty may not know what he has at stake, and he doesn’t particularly want her to see that side of him. For all his little daydreams that she might put her hand on his thigh while sitting next to him in that Pop’s booth, or that she might curl her fingers into his, Jughead isn’t delusional. Just because Betty isn’t Archie’s fan club president anymore doesn’t mean she’s about to show interest in a scruffy, lanky poor kid. The more he thinks about it, the more ludicrous the image becomes. He’ll just take whatever he can get for as long as he can. 

Again, a couple separate texts come through.

**_Maybe you shouldn’t throw in the towel yet_ **

**_I know from my mom’s notes that Mayor McCoy keeps her schedule free from 3 to 4 every day. You could ‘drop by’_ **

He wants to hug her—this is the stupid optimism that he would never dare venture, but nevertheless, will pursue doggedly. Mayor McCoy might at least admit who the anonymous buyer is, might slip something that will preserve his fight a little longer. 

Jughead settles for laying back, phone against his chest, remembering her arms looped around his waist. Remember the forgein feeling of wanting to wrench her out of the seat across from Chuck Clayton and hold her head in the crook of his neck. 

**_anyways I’ll see you at the twilight closing!_ **

There is a box, indicating an emoji his phone is too antiquated to register. He knows it’s probably just a thumbs up, but for a delusional blip, Jughead bites his cheek and pretends it’s a small pink heart.

  
  
  
  


Jughead accepts that the rest of his week will likely be Betty Cooper free, and tries to tamp down the daydreams. This morning he realized she still has one of his shirts, and he’s thinking about what fabric softener it might smell like when she returns it as he and Fangs emerge from Southside High the following afternoon. He’s only half listening to Fangs talk about Jughead’s motorcycle maintenance when he spots Veronica Lodge, perched on a concrete ledge along the sidewalk. She sticks out so glaringly that everyone gives her a ten food berth.

Spotting him, Veronica stands and Jughead feels his head loll back in pre-emptive exhaustion. Out of the corner of his eye, Fangs gives Veronica a once over and murmurs, “You and your new dual life, man, I can’t keep up.”

Veronica smiles like a politician. He puffs out a breath slowly, a performance of exasperation. “We gotta walk and talk, Lodge. I have a meeting with Mayor McCoy.”

Fangs nods in departure, cutting across the street and following the train tracks. Veronica’s eyes follow him like she’s taking notes for an ethnographic study. Jughead clears his throat and jerks his head—he truly does not want to miss his window with McCoy, even if it’s a last ditch effort.

Veronica follows, seeming a little more reigned in than usual. A princess knows when she’s outside the limits of the kingdom. Fittingly, she blurts, a little harried, “What’s a Southside Serpent?”

Jughead chokes back a laugh. She came all the way here for this? “You came all the way here to ask me that? I’m sure literally any of your classmates could fill you in on that front.”

She rolls her eyes, which Jughead finds strangely comforting—something expected out of this very unusual situation. “Yes, I got the very helpful response from the Sheriff’s son that they’re drug dealers and petty thieves.”

Jughead nods, like she shouldn’t need to know more. But of course, he can’t resist popping that bubble, even if it’s exactly what she’s asking for. “Sure. And me. And that kid over there—” He jerks his head at Alex, aka Baby Teeth. “And all my oldest friends.”

Her eyes have widened, but the rest of her expression is well trained. “Listen,” Jughead sighs, not sure it’s worth going into the intricacies. “This is the way it is for us. The police don’t look out for us, so we look out for us. Of course there is some drugs and petty theft, too. But I don’t fault anyone for paying their bills, Veronica.”

Without skipping a beat, Veronica presses, a wry smile on her face, “I can’t picture you peddling drugs. No offense.” 

“Because I fucking don’t. But I still have a tattoo that could get me suspended from school and referred to Sheriff Keller. There are fights every fucking day at my school over gang rivalries. And you know what?” He’s worked up now, ready to rip into anyone who comes near him. _He_ can hate the Serpents, but it’s got nothing to do with Park Avenue princess moral superiority. “It’s the same shit as Cheryl Blossom pitting people against you because your mom is fucking waitress, Veronica. Just deeper and more fraught.”

Veronica freezes. “I’m sorry if I—I asked because of my mom. She was at Pop’s last night, arguing with some guy. A Southside Serpent, I guess. Cheryl got it on camera. And I just don’t want her falling into the same shit that got my dad sent to prison, so I’m asking if you know anything about it. I’m not trying to be… ” Her voice trails off, a little thick. “I don’t think I’m better than you, Jughead.”

Jughead swallows. Arguing with some guy, some Southside Serpent. Nausea settles in, knowing that there’s a ninety-nine percent change that it’s FP on Cheryl’s recording, _his_ double-headed Serpent emblem, even if none of those Northside girls know it.

“Okay. I’m—” Jughead interrupts his own apology. “I’ll find out for you if I can, alright?” They’ve reached the bus stop, and he has half an hour to make it to City Hall. 

Veronica softens. “Thank you.”

But he’s not promising for Veronica’s sake, but because maybe, even if his last-ditch efforts go belly up, he’s got another lead.

  
  
  
  


Sierra McCoy has a model set of Riverdale in her office. As much as it irks him, the idea that their taxes were paying for this Christmas village model, Jughead finds himself begrudgingly fascinated. Will there be a red haired ruffian on the football field? A blond ponytail ducking into the Riverdale Register? Is there a hat-clad figure in his booth at Pop’s?

There is no Southside in the model, not much of it anyway. This particular detail jerks him back to reality, where Mayor McCoy spews works like _blight_ and _cesspool._ She uses these words because they are the terms that convinced wealthy white Northsiders to elect her.

At least now he knows how she’s buying the Southside vote.

He’s wearing his most presentable outfit—a black jean jacket that Sweet Pea’s grandma handed down to him, a maroon plaid shirt that smelled the best and possessed the fewest wrinkles. 

“Andrews Construction is scheduled to demolish starting Monday morning. I’m sorry, Mr. Jones,” she condescends. 

Jughead has prepared his own political stump speech, a pathos laden tale of sneaking into the Twilight because they couldn’t afford tickets for the whole family. It’s true; of course. They are good childhood memories, a rarity that he’s not above exploiting. “It’s like my home,” he pleads, the truth quivering beneath the words.

She blinks, but never falters. “That’s sweet, really. But the future of Riverdale is at stake.” 

Jughead swallows, tasting copper and defeat. Gazing reflexively at the town model, he thinks _the future of my Riverdale has always been at stake._ What she really means is her re-election—that’s what it’s always about, and even the impulse to publish one thousand words about it on _The Blue and Gold_ website doesn’t console him.

  
  
  


There is one more option, but Jughead can’t stomach it. 

He kicks a stone along the curb, staring at the Andrews Construction office trailer. It’s not Fred’s fault for taking the deal. It’s not Fred’s fault that FP started drinking again and got himself fired. It’s not Fred’s fault that his father is neck deep in corruption.

Besides, Fred has always had a gift for spotting the real problem. Once, when he and Archie were nine or ten, Jughead locked himself in the bathroom when Archie told him off for not sharing their turns equally in their video game. Fred had gotten down outside the door and told him a story—probably made up—about stealing his friend’s toy not because he wanted to steal it, but because he knew his parents could never afford something like that. Young Jughead had unlocked the door and apologized to an already lectured-at Archie, and then Fred played at least five games of Sorry with them.

The burst of rage explodes in his chest, his hands, and Jughead kicks the fucking rock a hard as he can. _Fuck,_ he wants to scream at the top of his lungs. He’s stuck in this fight alone, a fight he’ll never win, and what he really needs is a fucking fridge with food in it and a bed that doesn’t have broken rusted springs that twist and jab into his back. He needs a cleaner place to shower than the Southside high locker room and a very-part time job so that he can keep up his grades at his low-fucking-expectations high school but still pay for his shitty phone, motorcycle parts, and change for the bi-weekly trip to the laundromat.

He pulls a shaking inhale, wipes his face and pretends not to feel the tears slick on his fingers. The phone buzzes from his pocket with an incoming call. 

Archie’s voice on the other end doesn’t even say hi. “Jug,” he accuses. “Betty’s investigating. She’s been digging up all this shit on Grundy! I thought I told her to lay low!”

Jughead grinds his toe of his threadbare sneakers into the curb, daring the rubber to split from the sole. Nursing the raw surface of his lip, worn down from anxious biting, Jughead stops himself from screaming back in response. He doesn’t have the patience for Archie, even though he knows it’s also not _his_ fault that Fred took the deal. It isn’t even exactly Archie’s fault that he’s in this situation—no one’s teacher should proposition them, much less… everything Grundy has done to Archie. 

But he’s also not going to tolerate Betty being told off by Archie for this. “I’m not her keeper, Arch. She’s doing her due diligence.” He ends the call there to avoid saying something he regrets.

Stalking back to Pop’s, digging through his backpack to see if he’s got enough cash for dinner, Jughead feels a deeper pit than hunger in his gut.

Obviously, Betty can do whatever she wants. It’s just that he’s seen her tip over the edge in pursuit of justice only recently. And she lied to him. That feeling swirls in his gut, and by the time the Chocklit Shoppe sign is in view, he’s digging his phone out of the pocket of his jeans again.

**_What happened to laying low?_ **

She doesn’t respond right away; he orders a club sandwich and it comes with a side of fries and soup he didn’t order. The guilt only lasts as long as it takes for him to take a spoonful of the soup and feel it warm its way down to his toes.

**_Grundy has a false identity, an unlicensed gun, and she tutored jason blossom last year. I can’t stop now._ **

Shit, _shit._ Of course, Archie had failed to mention the particulars of the ‘digging.’ This was a gold mine, and if Archie still wasn’t convinced, then things were worse than he thought. He types back **_are you going to Keller? Can I help?_ **

Jughead suddenly wishes he’d ordered a burger, too. Not that he has the money for it, but moments like this increase his hunger tenfold. 

**_I know you’re dealing with the drive in stuff, jug, it’s fine_ **

Jughead feels a pang in his gut that has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with wanting Betty to be sitting across from him. No Veronica, no Kevin, no Archie. No predacious teachers or unstable housing situations. It’s stupid, delusional even, how much her mere presence calms him. Maybe he’s projecting, imagining that she feels the same kind of serenity, the same bubble of protection from the malicious universe when she joins him in this booth.

He knows it’s deeply masochistic—Betty was in love with Archie only days ago. And now she’s stalking his girlfriend _(jesus fucking christ)_ out of… what? Protection? Sabotage? Hope? 

Jughead types: **_Are you doing this because you still have feelings for Archie?_ ** He stares at the text for as long as it takes to finish his sandwich. This is not a question he can ask her, not really, not for how relatively little they know each other. But when he goes to erase the text, he presses _send_ instead.

Panicking, Jughead plops his head into his hands. Perfect, he’s overstepping again in the span of only a few days.

His heart somersaults when the phone buzzes right back. **_No, the Archie I thought I loved would not do this._ **

Jughead should remind her that they can’t really place the same kind of blame on Archie as Grundy, that no underage boy should be put in this position. But he’s caught on the floating feeling that surges through him when he reads _thought I loved thought I loved thought I loved_ over and over again, delighting in all of its conditionalities and past tenses.

  
  
  
  


In the end, he picks her movie. Maybe it’s a distress signal. _I had to go through this but let’s get back on the same page._ All he wants is to go back to how things were between him and Betty and move forward. 

On Saturday night, Jughead opts to avoid Serpents and the Andrews family alike by secluding himself, watching from the projection booth. He sees Veronica Lodge and Kevin Keller drive in and scouts for any sign of a blonde ponytail, but comes up empty. It’s possible he misses her, or misidentifies her parents, who he assumes she’s with if not Veronica.

Halfway through the movie, Toni stalks in, not bothering to knock. If she spots the cot or his enormous backpack, she says nothing except, “Your raven-haired Northside associate just threatened to stiletto stab a contingent of Serpents.”

Jughead grimaces. “All I did was talk her down from thinking the Serpents are complete low-life criminals. She’s harmless.”

Toni purses her lips. “With an ass like hers, I wouldn’t say _harmless.”_

He rolls his eyes—he doesn’t need this worlds-colliding stress on top of everything right now. “Is my dad here?” He could at least try to catch the exchange between FP and Hermione Lodge; indisputable confirmation of his suspicions. 

Toni shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “Not sure. You want to see him?”

Jughead sighs, feeling the weight in her words. _Do you want to go home now?_ He doesn’t, but the tradeoff between being a sixteen-year-old nomad and dealing with a perpetual half-drunk, washed-up, sell-out gang banger doesn’t feel quite so easy to parse anymore. Jughead wishes that Toni were Betty, so he could invite her to sit next to him, to avoid his problems by providing running commentary through the rest of the movie, and maybe begging her to share some popcorn. Instead, he grunts and Toni rolls her eyes, turning on the balls of her feet for the door.

“The garage door will be open, okay?” she tosses over her shoulder. Jughead doesn’t respond.

  
  
  
  


He wakes from tossing and turning to a call from Betty. “Hi,” she breathes, and something soothing trickles down his spine at the sound. “So, um, shit really hit the fan tonight.”

Jughead smiles, liking when Betty swears. She does not look like a girl who swears, but he likes that about her, that there is a lot unexpected under the surface. “Yeah, I, uh, looked for you. What’s up?”

Betty relays the story—how her mom found her diary and wanted to go confront Geraldine Grundy with Archie in tow. How Betty talked her down and convinced her to wait until Archie got home. Fred’s agreement to go to Keller, followed by Alice’s vow to leave Archie’s name out of the headlines.

“Shit, I’m… I’m sorry you had to deal with that alone.” He sits up, thinking about the irony of it all, sitting here and dealing with his own mountain of problems alone.

“It’s okay, really. Veronica helped me with some of the investigating. It doesn’t stop my mom from being a psycho who reads my diary, but it worked out in the end. Grundy doesn’t get an easy out.” Jughead only half hears her, thinking about what else Betty might have written about in her diary. If he’s featured at all. He supposes it must be pretty tame if Betty is still in possession of her phone.

“Still, I can’t imagine it’s been an easy night.” _It’s good to hear from you. It hasn’t been an easy night for me, either._ Jughead swallows the words.

“I saw you played _Rebel Without A Cause.”_

Maybe he’s imagining a suggestive lilt to her words. “It was a good suggestion.”

“I’m sad I missed it. I—” she starts and stops, seeming to hold back a thought, and Jughead clenches his fists like he’s trying to grab hold of it, to guess what Betty never says. “I’ll make it up to you,” she finishes, but the suggestive tone is gone. All genuine earnest Betty Cooper.

“I’ll hold you to it,” he tosses back, his feigned disinterested tease like a protective barrier for his racing heartbeat.

  
  
  


Jughead packs out on Sunday, not wanting to deal with the nuisance of a mid-week eviction. His giant backpack—a relic from when FP was in the Air Force—is brimming with clothes and books. Noticing a stray flannel shirt under the bed, he shoves it on top. He takes his vintage Pulp Fiction movie poster, rolling it neatly; Toni gave it to him last year for his birthday, left in the Red and Black office without fanfare for him to find on his own. 

The last thing he grabs is the bottle of spray paint he’d pocketed walking off the Andrews Construction site. It’s probably a juvenile idea, but Jughead doesn’t want to go quietly into the night. He contemplates graffiting a Gertrude Stein quote— _There is no there there—_ but he ultimately decides that the significance will be lost on the hired hands who bulldoze the building this week. 

So he settles on something more juvenile— _Jughead Jones was here._

Behind him comes the unmistakable gravel voice of his father. “They’ll tear the booth down, too. Raze everything. And us with it.”

Always overly poetic, always a little bit off with his logic. But Jughead can’t really argue that he’s the same way. He almost graffitied a Gertrude Stein quote, for god’s sake. But he’s allowed to be petty about FP; he’s earned that right.

There are a million ways Jughead could respond better, but he’s exhausted, infuriated already by whatever attempt at reconciliation FP is hunting for. Shouldn’t he know that now, more than ever, Jughead’s capacity for forgiveness has run dry?

And maybe there’s some universe where they save it all, stored up in the back of town hall, and they’ll rebuild it in 100 years. Wonder who the hell they were.

He does not share this thought with his father. Begrudgingly, he turns around to face him, standing like a man playing a gangster in a movie, pretending his presence is some kind of dramatic reveal. _I’m sober, kid. It’s over, boy. Come on home, son._

“Where you gonna live now?” There isn’t even a hint of suggestion that it should be back with him, and Jughead doesn’t know if that makes him distraught or relieved.

“I’ll figure it out, Dad. I always do.”

Jughead stalks off, starting the trek to Fang’s place to pick up his bike, ignoring the motorcycles that enter, convening for whatever meeting FP has called. He’ll keep running, he’ll figure it out. So far, Jughead always has. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, i'm chuffed to hear your thoughts :)


	4. four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betty, in 1.05 - Heart of Darkness. But, you know, my version. Mentions of Polly's suicide attempt, which of course, never actually happens, but is nevertheless discussed. Mentions of Jason selling drugs, also rather in line with canon, but the theme of selling and using drugs is a little more fleshed out than in canon.

_ Turn the light out, say goodnight _ _  
_ _ No thinking for a little while _ _  
_ _ Let's not try to figure out everything at once _ _  
_ _ It's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky _ _  
_ _ We're half awake in a fake empire _ _  
_ **_—the national_ **

* * *

  
  


Betty holds her breath the whole way home from the Sheriff’s station, waiting for the lecture to begin. Flattening her forehead against the backseat window, she curses herself for storing the hand gun in her bureau—obviously her mother would put her clothes away and freak the hell out. It was a panicked move; she hasn’t been acting even-keel this week, between breaking into a teacher’s car and plotting to blackmail her best friend. 

(Betty knows it’s silly, but she wonders if Jughead’s sudden absence from her daily life has anything to do with it. She’d resisted his help, too, knowing he would talk her down from a misdemeanor.)

In the end, Geraldine Grundy is done in by Archie’s tearful confession and reluctant submission of his covert emails into evidence. There was nothing glaring in the messages themselves, but combined with Dilton’s witness statement, everything lined up for an arrest. The gun was submitted as evidence and no one seemed too concerned with how Betty procured it—at least, not after Alice flashed Sheriff Keller a  _ look.  _

Betty’s eyelids feel puffy and overworked from exhaustion and the blue-flourescent light of the Sheriff’s station hallways. Her stomach aches from sitting across from Archie, unsuccessfully willing him to meet her eye. While Alice had pulled the car up, after waiting hours to be dismissed, Betty finally managed a moment to set her hand on Archie’s arm, but when she’d opened her mouth, nothing came out.

She’d been rolling the words around in her mouth for hours, trying to figure out how to comfort Archie without apologizing; Betty’s not sorry that Geraldine or Jennifer or whatever her name really is will face consequences. Even if Archie and Fred decide not to press charges, the incident will be brought to the school district sexual violence committees, her teaching license may be revoked. 

Maybe this is what Alice is doing, too—searching for the words. To say that Betty did the right thing in the wrong way. (This is probably too hopeful.) 

When her mother finally speaks, there’s a warble in Alice’s voice. “No more lies, Betty. I can’t—not after Polly and Jason. Not you, too, Elizabeth.”

“Mom.” Betty tries to keep her voice even, but it’s hard not to feel emotional when her mom performs a rare show of vulnerability. “Listen, I’m  _ not  _ Polly. And Archie is definitely not Jason Blossom. And just like Polly, the more you try to control my life—” Betty pauses, unsure how to continue. “I’m sorry, okay? But I was trying to do the right thing, I always am. I need you to trust me.”

A silence rings through the car, punctuated only by slight sniffles on her mother’s part. Betty isn’t completely sure that Alice won’t double down on consequences, but instead, her mom goes quiet. 

Not meaning to deflect, a thought escapes Betty’s mouth before she can reel it back in. “Where’s dad?”

Her mother clears her throat, emotion suddenly evaporated. “Probably already at the office.”

Betty blanches. “Mom, you  _ agreed.  _ Archie stays out of the headlines!”

Alice scoffs like Betty has suggested something ludicrous. “We agreed not to run his name, but we  _ cannot  _ stay silent about a sexually predatory teacher. And of course, the connections to Jason Blossom will boost our sales even more. Easy buzz. And just before my journalism retreat—oh, Gayle from  _ The Seaside Sentinel _ will be  _ green in the gills  _ about this.”

Betty closes her eyes to avoid rolling them, which she does to avoid pointing out how goulish her mother sounds, exploiting this situation for her own gain. 

On the other hand, despite the possession of a firearm seeming like a groundable offense and likely even to induce those parental phone controls they tried on Polly last year—it seems that Betty’s in the clear. She might even get the house to herself tonight, assuming Alice will turn right around and head to the office.

Left with merely a  _ we’re not done talking about this breaking-into-a-car stunt, Elizabeth,  _ Betty takes the stairs two at a time to her bedroom.

She would sneak out again and try to find Jughead, divulge everything, but she’s far too tired. Instead, Betty takes a shower, hoping maybe the warm water will wash off the shock of how quickly all of this unraveled. How poorly it could have gone. How, despite her flaws, Alice had listened to Betty’s story. Maybe there is hope that her parents aren’t lying about Polly after all.

Laying in bed with her damp hair, trying to decide who to text first, Betty wonders vaguely whether Grundy might have told the truth about the abusive husband. It sounded like a sob story for a clearly tactical woman, but Betty also knows it’s wrong to assume an abused woman is lying. There is, perhaps, a lot more nuance beyond the headlines splashed across a front page. 

The thought is interrupted by a familiar chorus of a Blink-182 song blaring nearby—it’s undoubtedly coming from Archie’s bedroom. If this is his dramatic response, they’ve all really dodged a bullet. But she texts him all the same— **_you okay?_ **

Out of habit, she perches on her window seat, waiting for a wave. Even with the light on, the curtains stay closed. So after a moment, she dials Jughead’s number, not sure why he seems like the right person to process this with, and tucks herself into her bedroom closet to muffle the sound, just in case her parents come home before they hang up.

  
  
  


As if nothing has changed, Archie rings Betty’s doorbell Monday morning. Thankfully her parents are already at the office—Betty indulges herself by baking muffins, packaging them up to pass to her friends at school so that Alice is none the wiser about her carb intake. 

On the way to school, Archie yammers about football, mentioning nothing about Grundy. It is classic Archie, throwing himself into something to avoid his problems; Betty’s watched him do it their entire lives. She’s grateful, when her phone rings, displaying a photo of Kevin voguing, to beg out of Archie’s monologue about the contest for varsity captain and how many plays he needs to memorize by the end of the afternoon.

“Oh my god,” Kevin gasps, “I’ve been trying to get a second away from my dad all morning to call you.  _ Apparently,  _ the case files for Jason’s murder were stolen out of my dad’s home office on Saturday? I thought he was working overtime because of the whole Grundy fiasco, but that’s why I didn’t see him all weekend.”

Betty’s heart races, already itching to sound the alarm to Jughead. “Someone broke into your  _ house?  _ How?”

Kevin stammers. “My dad was at the station taking yours and Archie’s statements. I was at the drive-in until, um, rather late.”

Her eyes narrow, bookmarking his hesitation for later interrogation. “Everything is gone?”

“ _ Everything. _ I mean, I don’t think anyone knows yet, aside from the people at the station. It’s not a good look. But I know you and Jug-Head are doing your whole detective schtick and I want to help recreate the wall if it will help.”

“The wall? You mean the murder board?” She doesn’t need to see him to know that Kevin is rolling his eyes. 

“Whatever. If Wednesday Addams is free after school, we could—”

Betty feels her face heat. “Don’t call him that, Kev. I mean, not that Wednesday isn’t like, objectively the best member of the Addams family.”

There is a beat of silence, and once again, Betty thinks Kevin is holding back a more biting comment. “Okay,  _ Blue and Gold  _ office at three-thirty. Jughead should be there soon after, his bike just got fixed,” she says.

“His  _ bike?  _ Betty, is Jughead a Southside Serpent?” 

Truthfully, Betty has not entertained that possibility—sure, Chuck had made the comment about him peddling drugs, but that was probably just Chuck being an enormous asshole. Obviously Jughead goes to Southside High, but Betty knows better than to draw immediate assumptions.

On the other hand, Betty is aware that there is a lot she doesn’t know about Jughead. But it’s best to keep any such speculations as far away from the Sheriff’s ears as possible, so Betty scoffs. “I’ll see you later, Kev.”

Archie is still staring obsessively at the playbook on his phone as they walk onto school grounds.

  
  


During English—another class where Betty is one of only a few sophomores bumped up to a junior level class—she finds herself staring out the window.

Even though Kevin’s probing question about Jughead’s potential gang membership should be gnawing at her, Betty is thinking about how she could hear the smile in his voice, even over the phone. She’s thinking about what the hell she meant by promising to  _ make it up to him  _ and where that line had even come from. Or what on earth he expected her to do about it.

Sue her if she’s a little more curious about the boy inside the leather jacket than the embroidery on the back of it. Besides—his jackets were denim, with that soft sherpa lining. 

The bell rings and Betty startles, only to flinch again when she looks up and spots Trevor Brown looming in front of her desk, hands stuffed in his pockets. Jughead stands like that sometimes, sheepish.  _ Jesus Christ, get a grip. _

“Hi Trev!” she greets brightly, overcompensating for her jumpiness. 

“Um, hey Betty. Do you wanna grab lunch with me?”

Betty blinks, confused. “Um, I don’t have lunch this period.” 

Trev’s throat bobs. “Oh, right, of course. Sophomore. Um, sorry. See you later, Betty.” He pivots to leave, eyes wide in mortification, and Betty’s mind finally catches up to Trev’s intentions. 

Trevor Brown is trying to  _ hang out  _ with her. Trev, who was close to Jason. Who saw the fast flame of Polly and Jason’s relationship up close. Channelling all of the distracted, breathless sensation simmering all period as she’d stared out the window, thinking about a different boy, Betty stands. “Wait, Trev, um, can I make it up to you?”

His eyes brighten. God, what was it with her and that line lately? “Uh, sure? I mean, do you wanna grab dinner at Pop’s tomorrow? If you’re free?”

Betty knows her dad won’t mind; he hates dealing with dinner when her mom is out of town. Pleased at her quick thinking, she gives a demure smile. “I’m very free,” she chirps, a giggle fluttering uncharacteristically in the back of her throat. Still, it works—Trev smiles back. 

  
  
  


As promised, Kevin is waiting in  _ The Blue and Gold _ office promptly after school, hands full of the photos printed during his study hall in the computer lab. Kevin has an even better record of sweet talking teachers than Betty—he even manages color ink permissions from the yearbook coordinator. 

“So tell me again,” Betty says. “Everything was gone? You’re doing this from memory?”

Kevin nods. “Or destroyed—you know, torn or crumpled. No fingerprints. They stole a bunch of files, all the video and audio the police collected. How exactly does this go, then? Did you find a _how to build a murder board_ article during lunch in the library?”

Betty rolls her eyes. “Not quite.”

As if in answer, Jughead swings in, helmet hooked onto his arm and the usual yarn hat adorning his head. There is something about his presence that both comforts and unsettles Betty, and she realizes in that split second just how much she’s missed him. Kevin raises an eyebrow at Betty and she avoids his eye, afraid of what he might too easily discern. 

Jughead raises a plastic bag in greeting, filled with the requested supplies—yarn and colored push pins. They’d exchanged texts during lunch and Jughead’s claims of  _ The Red and Black _ office being a graveyard of a decades’ worth of random school supplies proved true. 

“I can’t believe you don’t have any security here,” Jughead says. “I didn’t even have to sign in. What if I really was a disaffected poor kid here to sell drugs?”

Kevin’s eyes flash again. Betty jumps in, shaming Kevin by proxy. “Classism, obviously. Besides, when has surveillance ever stopped kids from selling drugs at school?”

“Touche, Cooper,” Jughead admits. 

Wordlessly, Betty offers him a muffin in exchange for the bag of supplies. Jughead crushes the muffin into his mouth with enthusiasm and she tries to suppress the color rising in her cheeks. It’s disgusting, really, that his piggish eating is making her react like this. Something about her likes hunger in Jughead Jones. Or maybe she just likes satisfying it.

_ Oh my god,  _ Betty jerks herself back to focus. Jughead goes for another muffin with an apologetic glance. 

They piece the web of articles and images together from Kevin’s memory. It’s strangely nice to have Kevin present as a buffer to help them resettle into the investigation. Last week blew them off track, and Betty’s feeling relieved to have these people back on her team—soloing the Grundy take down had not been her finest hour.

After a handful of pinpricks and papercuts, they sit back to study their work. Betty tries and fails not to get stuck on her sister’s photo, the twist of grief tightening in her belly until a light knock on the door startles her out of her trance. 

Trevor ducks in, a huge smile plastered on his face and an adorable little wave—Betty doesn’t have time to feel the jolt of guilt for the way she beams back.

“Betty, hey.” 

“Trev!” She draws out the v. “Hi.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” he apologizes, perhaps landing on Jughead’s face, which is twisted into a wince.

“Oh, no, it’s okay we’re just, uhh,” Betty struggles with how to explain their task. She, of course, is enamored with their work, but she knows not everyone shares hers and Jughead’s thirst for mystery, nor Kevin’s quest for dirt.

“Making our  _ murder board,”  _ Jughead cuts in, every bit aware of how weird he sounds. His eyebrows fly up, and Betty doesn’t have time to parse his tone or expression before whipping back to Trev, who looks appropriately awkward. His eyes latch onto Jason’s photo, and his expression excites and guilts Betty. The death of his friend is still raw in his eyes, but it means it should be easy to get him talking over a quasi-dinner date. 

_ I am horrible.  _

Trev swallows and pivots back to Betty, his voice still even and bright. “Well, I just wanted to make sure we’re still on for tomorrow!”

Betty bites her lip, suddenly confronted with the discomfort of maintaining this pretense in front of Kevin and Jughead. She smothers the flip of her stomach with a patented Cooper smile. “Yeah of course, it’s a date!”

The hope in Trev’s eyes and the wide-eyed shock in Kevin's are more than enough to deal with— she’s grateful she can’t see Jughead’s face.  _ Why does it matter what Jughead thinks?  _ A fruitless question, she knows, wringing her hands.

_ Because I’m still sleeping in his flannel shirt like a pathetic idiot. _

Her face scrunches, trying to edit out her enthusiasm. “Um, I’ll, uh, see you there.” A clear dismissal without snubbing him, maintaining the front.  _ Smooth,  _ she groans internally. 

Trev does a weird, dorky point into the air as he departs, which Betty spins around to ignore, meeting Kevin’s skeptical gaze head on.

“You’re going on a date with Trev. Does Mama Cooper know about that?”

Betty laughs too loudly. “I’m not on house arrest.”  _ Mama Cooper doesn’t know I’m at Pop’s with Jughead half the nights of the week.  _ “Besides, she’s out of town at a Women in Journalism Spa Retreat.

“And it’s not a  _ date  _ date,” she emphasizes. For absolutely no one else’s benefit.

“You just… called it a date. You literally said,  _ it’s a date.” _ Jughead’s tone is dry as ever, and Betty doesn’t risk revealing the blush heating her neck to check whether he looks at all annoyed. Or jealous. Maybe, with the right inflection, he could sound jealous. But that, Betty decides, will only deepen her stupid, ballooning fixation. 

“That’s because it’s a cover,” she defends. “Really it’s an intelligence gathering mission.”

Kevin licks his lips. “And what kind of  _ intelligence  _ might that be?”

Both Betty and Jughead groan in tandem, and then turn to each other. There is a beat of something there, and Betty hurries on before the blush takes over again.

“Trev and Jason were friends, they were on the water polo team together. Maybe Trev knows something about Jason he didn’t think was important.”

Jughead’s eyes narrow. “How far are you committing to this mission, Cooper? Friday night football uniform?”

Betty rolls her eyes, grateful for the mask of banter. “You wish.”   
  


Jughead blinks three times, a little too quickly. “Um, If we’re done for now, I think I might go check on Archie,” he says.

Kevin grins devilishly. The Grundy story is not exactly all over school yet—Weatherbee called in a substitute, but one day without their music teacher hasn’t drawn suspicions. Of course, the  _ Register _ will soon uncap that story, and even with Archie’s name printed, it won’t take long for a bunch of high school kids to make the mental leap. “I think Jailbait Andrews is in football practice,” Kevin remarks.

Betty doesn’t even need to jump down Kevin’s throat for such an ignorant comment—Jughead does it for her. “Don’t joke, Keller. It’s not Archie’s fault.” He casts a disapproving look and stalks off. Kevin looks to Betty, ashamed. She agrees with Jughead—and honestly feels another flush of admiration for how loyal Jughead is to Archie—but Kevin looks appropriately admonished. 

They bump into Veronica in the hallway, wearing her Vixen’s garb even though practice was cancelled per an early morning text from Cheryl about beginning the ‘rituals of mourning’ for her brother. Veronica feels determined to kill Cheryl with kindness, offering to run practice. Cheryl, of course, responded with  **_stage your coup d'etat at your own peril, Lodge._ **

“Hey Scooby gang. Out to catch a scoop?” 

Jughead stands half the hallway apart from them, looking more nervous than usual. “V,” Kevin says, looping and arm through hers, “You’ll never guess who Betty’s going on a date with.”

Veronica’s eyes flicker to Jughead and back so quickly that only Betty detects the motion. She also knows that Kevin is only latching onto Veronica because he detects Betty’s disapproval about the Archie comment, but it’s still annoying. 

“A junior, no less. Trevor Brown.”

Betty presses her lips together and marches out the door onto the football field, the rest of them legging it to catch up.

“Betty! Not so fast! This sounds like a prime show and tell moment for the class,” Veronica calls.

Her romantic life is the last thing Betty wants to discuss, physically sandwiched as she is, between the boy out on the football field, the boy she used to like who liked… someone else, and the boy she thinks she likes now—one who she’s not sure likes  _ anyone.  _

Betty spots Archie on the bleachers, sweating in his football practice jersey, and for the first time in a week, she’s genuinely relieved to see him.  _ Please make the teasing stop,  _ she prays. Especially in front of Jughead, who still looks like someone pissed in his coffee.

Archie greets her with a tiny smile, brows crunched like even that is an enormous effort. His leg bounces, rattling the bleachers. Betty lays a palm on his knee in a silent gesture. Jughead slinks behind them on the bleachers, coming around to Archie’s other side. The boys meet each other’s eyes, exchanging a head nod and weighted look. 

“According to Betty, Trev’s just a source and there’s  _ nothing _ romantic in the offing,” Kevin prattles as he and Veronica ascend the steps, still arm in arm.

Veronica sighs. “Why is everything weird in this town! Why can’t a date be a date! Can I still dress you?”

Why does everyone have such an obsession with what she wears? Betty just rolls her eyes in response. She wants to sink into the bleachers, or at least surreptitiously pull out her phone and text Veronica to knock it off in front of Jug. Instead, Veronica reels on Archie. 

“What about you Archie, how’s life in a PG world?”

Archie swivels to look at Veronica, no mirth in his eyes. Jughead and Betty each shoot her a weighted look, but relentlessly, Veronica clarifies. “Post Grundy. What, too soon?”

Betty squashes a smile as Jughead rolls his eyes for her benefit.

With no shortage of misery in his voice, Archie replies, “I’m just trying to get the football captain spot. If music’s not gonna pan out—”

“Hey,” Betty interrupts, now realizing why Archie was so single minded this morning. “Don’t. You can still pursue music, Arch.”

Jughead claps Archie on the shoulder, who sighs and stares into the distance like they’re in a movie, like he’s got a long road ahead of him. Betty stifles the laugh bubbling up in her throat at how insane this year has already started; it’s not even worth listing the reasons why. 

Suddenly, Val Brown is calling to Archie, waving from the field’s sidelines. Betty presses her fingernails gently into her palms, just light friction. It’s not that she still has feelings for Archie like  _ that,  _ but she does want to be the person he talks to. And it seems like he’s determined not to talk to any of them about what happened.

“Come on,” Veronica invites. “I told Cheryl I would pass out this stack of invitations to Jason’s memorial, and I don’t know who all these people are.”

Betty nods vaguely, looking over at Jughead. She doesn’t want to abandon him, and she kind of hoped she’d have a minute to talk strategy with him about her fake date with Trev. His eyes are fixed on Archie. “I’m fine,” he responds, seeming to feel her gaze more than see it. “I’m just gonna stay and talk to Arch.”

Her nails press a little harder, even though it’s good that someone else will try, someone Archie might actually respond to. “Yeah, okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Dryly, but with the slightest of smiles, Jughead replies, “Can I have the rest of the muffins?”

  
  
  


It’s not hard for Betty to fib her way out of dinner with her dad the next day;  _ Vixen’s practice ran late and I’m meeting Kevin at Pop’s to work on a project.  _ Kevin is the easiest bet with Hal—he seems to narrow his eyes about Veronica, probably because he knows something of her parents, and the stuff with Archie and Grundy is far too fresh in her father’s mind. 

Vixen’s practice  _ does  _ run late—in a direct reversal of Monday, Cheryl is out for blood, or at least for Betty’s back muscles. After showering, she only has time to scrape her wet hair into a ponytail and put on her same clothes from school. Really, it’s better if she’s her regular old Betty Cooper self; she doesn’t need to lead Trev on, if that’s indeed a real concern. 

Veronica tries to convince her otherwise. “Listen, B, I know you are more interested in plaid than the blue and gold that dear Trevor sports, but you need to deliver  _ some  _ kind of goods if you want to get any intel.” Betty refuses the offer to swap clothes, but accepts the subtle eyeshadow and bold lip that Veronica paints on for her. 

Bracing herself in the bright glowing entrance to the diner, Betty spots a gray hat in the third booth to the right of the door. She’s not sure if she’s more annoyed or relieved to see him here, posted up like backup while she goes undercover. There’s a girl in the booth, too, someone small with bright pink hair and a leather jacket. Betty doesn’t need to see the Serpents patch on the back to know that it’s there, and it’s more than she can really think about right now.

Her palms are slick and warm against the cold door handle, and she tastes the clay of her lipstick on the seam of her mouth. Jughead peeks her direction when the door dings, and suddenly Betty kind of wishes she’d done herself up a little more. 

Not that she thinks Jughead cares about anything like that—make up or dresses or cliche teenage foot rubbing under the diner tables. And maybe showing off that way would send the wrong message, like she’s a girl who wants that.  _ I’m not Polly,  _ Betty thinks again. She doesn’t care about letterman jackets or being under someone’s arm like a prop. 

Trev, for all the ways he could easily check that box, is extremely sweet, complimenting how nice she looks when she sinks into the booth across from him. He’s nervous, tittering on about their English paper, but Betty just lets him ramble for a minute. 

Everything happens like it’s supposed to: they smile and make small talk. Hermione winks as they place their orders. Trev makes an awkward  _ get whatever you want  _ comment, as if he’s okay with Betty eating a greasy hamburger on their date. A lot of River Vixens would never, and he’s trying to be clear that he doesn’t care about girls performing girly-ness. 

It’s killing her not to be facing Jughead and the other girl to have a sense of what they’re doing. Is he here because he’s always here? Or trying to make her jealous?  _ God  _ that’s crazy, she tells herself, over and over as she chews her grilled cheese. She just needs something interesting to report back and make this stupid, impulsive mission worthwhile.

“I think it’s great what you’re doing for Jason,” Trev blurts, as if reading Betty’s mind. 

Betty simultaneously feels and acts her sympathy—it’s one of the reasons she’s good at getting answers from people. She’s watched Alice do it for years, though she can’t tell how much her mother  _ feels  _ anything. “Were you and Jason close? I mean, I know you were in water polo together for years.” 

Like putty in her hands, Trev leans in. “Just between us, right?” Betty nods, perhaps too rapidly, and leans in to mirror Trev. “Of course.”

“I just— I feel guilty about this.” 

Betty nods again, urging him on with what she hopes is a non-threatening stare.

“A few months ago, Jason started acting all weird and secretive. I think it was about your sister, to be honest.”

Betty tries to look calm, her eyes open wide and lips pressed together. Of course she knew this could be about Polly, but the immediate connection startles her. 

“They started dating last spring and within a few weeks he… changed. Didn’t return my texts—kind of normal when your friend gets a girlfriend, I guess, but then he started selling off all this stuff.  _ Anything  _ he could sell—the collectible baseball cards, video games, designer clothes. And then I heard he started dealing drugs.”

Betty gasps, genuinely. “Drugs? What kind of drugs?” Was Polly doing drugs? Was that where she really was; rehab? It seemed like the kind of thing her parents would lie to cover up. But it’s been  _ months.  _ Betty is pretty sure rehab doesn’t last that long unless it’s really bad. 

Maybe it was really bad. Fentanyl? Meth? 

“I didn't know, weed? Pills? He stopped talking to me by that point.” Trev’s voice wavers. “He didn’t tell me about any of this, I just got worried and started asking around and—I saw him with this lock box and cash in the drive-in parking lot at the end of the school year.” 

It’s certainly something to go on. And even though she sort of hopes not, maybe Jughead would know something about the drug game in Riverdale. Well, at least more than Betty does. “All of this happened  _ after  _ Jason and Polly got together,” she repeats and Trev nods.

An awkward air settles between them, so Betty tries to be kind. “That must have been really hard for you. To lose a friend like that.”

“I’m sorry about your sister,” he replies, as if the two things are equated.

To be polite, Betty asks, “Will you be at the memorial?” It’s an empty question, the whole town will be at the memorial. Still, it helps them muscle through the last bites of their food. 

Betty lets Trev pay; he apologizes a lot about nothing, and it’s clear that he thinks he’s at fault for bringing up Jason, not Betty for baiting him. In the parking lot, he pulls Betty into an awkward hug that she returns a little stiltedly. 

“Do you want a ride home?” he offers, as if they aren’t already monumentally uncomfortable. 

Betty shakes her head with a polite smile. “My dad is coming. Thanks, though.” She watches him drive away. As soon as his taillights dip out of sight, Betty whips around and makes a beeline for Jughead’s table back inside. Being out of Trevor’s sight, the act rolling off her back, feels relieving.

The Serpent girl and Jughead sit across from each other, both doing homework. It’s comforting, she realizes, to have immediate confirmation that this probably isn’t a date either. 

“I’ve got something big, I think,” Betty announces, and the girl looks up. She’s very beautiful, Betty notices, in a way that Betty will never be, because it involves pink hair and combat boots and a lip ring. But still, even past all that, she’s hot. Betty did not realize Jughead was friends with anyone that might be considered a bombshell. “Oh,” she blurts, like a starstruck idiot. “Sorry, I’m Betty.”

The girl smiles without teeth, impossibly cool. “I know. I’m Toni.” She extends a hand and Betty shakes it firmly. This is not exactly how Betty expects to be greeted by a Southside Serpent, but she’s too distracted by the  _ I know,  _ by the thought that Jughead talks to his friends about her. 

Jughead looks somehow both pinker and more sullen than usual, jabbing at his keyboard like it’s done something awful to deserve his wrath. Betty feels her face grow warm, too. 

“Jug, do you mind if I sit?” Betty asks, and Jughead scoots in to let her plop down beside him, shutting the laptop before she can see what he’s writing. She catches a waft of his scent as she sits—the one she knows but shouldn’t, the one becoming less and less concentrated in his stolen flannel shirt. 

Betty moves gingerly, like he’s a cat who might hiss back at her, but instead he meets her eyes with hesitance, a wordless apology for the snapping.

“He’s cute,” Toni comments, and Betty chokes on her own air.

“Huh?” Her heart is thundering. 

“They guy you were sitting with. Kind of dorky, but sweet.”

Betty takes a slow breath of relief. “Um, yeah, he’s nice. Not really my—I mean, I was just asking him some questions about my sister’s boyfriend.”

Toni smirks. “You’re wily, girl.”

Jughead seems to find his voice. “So what did he say?”

Betty turns to him, wishing they were alone but trying not to mind. Besides, Toni must know something of their editorial partnership if she  _ knows  _ who Betty is. “He said Jason started dating Polly, stopped talking to him, and then started selling drugs, all around the end of last school year _.  _ No  _ hard  _ drugs _ ,  _ I guess, just weed and some pills, maybe. Trev wasn’t so sure on those details. But he knows Jason was trying to make a lot of money, fast.”

She leaves out her own worries about Polly. “We can’t print this in  _ The Blue and Gold, _ obviously. I don’t think it would be ethical to drag the whole drug thing into it until we can see where it leads.”

Jughead nods, soberly. “Why does a rich kid sell drugs, anyway?” 

Toni butts in, still doing her geometry homework simultaneously. “Classic. Running away from his parents. Especially  _ those  _ parents. Total gothic horror psychos, aren’t they?”

Jughead drums his fingers, crunches on another fry, his brow furrowed. “Or running from drug dealers.” He gives Toni a meaningful look, which makes Betty feel completely out of her depth. She hates that Kevin is right, that there is a universe of Jughead’s that she knows nothing about, while Betty’s is an open book. 

Toni takes a beat before replying. “So now you need to find out if he was dealing for Serpents or Ghoulies.”

It’s not a specific  _ you— _ but she’s definitely not talking to Betty. Betty gnaws her lip, rubbing away whatever’s left of the lipstick. There is no dignified way to get Jughead alone, to ask him to clarify, at least not without looking prissy to his friend. 

Still, he follows her outside when she announces, “Sorry, my dad’s texting, I better head home.”

They’re standing in the same spot where she said goodbye to Trev, only now Betty has to restrain herself from touching the boy in front of her. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders curled over like he’s protecting himself. “Sorry about—” he starts, then stops. “Just so you know… I don’t sell drugs, okay?”

Betty cringes. “Was I that obvious?” 

“No,” he smiles, a little smug. “Well, maybe to me.” 

  
  
  
  
  


The walk home is cool—the surprise changes of autumn happening in earnest now. The leaves will turn in a week or two; she and Archie always do the yard work for their elderly neighbors. She wonders if they’re too busy for that now, or too estranged at the moment.

Betty’s dad is in the garage when she walks up, working on his current project, the Thunderbird they towed from a salvage lot in Centreville at the start of last summer. It’s supposed to be hers once she turns sixteen, if he thinks it’s safe enough. Polly never got the offer—Betty supposes that her sister always had various River Vixens and Bulldogs to drive her around after her sixteenth birthday. 

It’s the first time in months she might get a word in with her dad without Alice breathing down their necks, and if one of her parents was ever a weaker link, it was certainly Hal. The thoughts about Polly in rehab have swirled around in her head on her walk home, pressing for an answer.

“Hi, sweetheart. Why don’t you grab a wrench and tighten up that hose for me?”

She takes the wrench and leans over, reaching in to attach it to the hose her dad has his hand on. Here it comes. Dive straight in.  _ What do you have to lose?  _

“Mom always shuts me down about Polly,” she starts.  _ Now I’m worried she was doing or dealing drugs.  _

Hal sighs, and Betty pushes. “Can we _ please  _ talk about it? What did Jason and Polly do that was so bad?”

Her father sighs again, more resigned, and reaches for a rag to wipe grease from his fingers. Taking his time, drawing it out so long that Betty’s sure that he’s going to placate her. To tell her it’s getting late. To ask if she has any homework.

“While you were in Los Angeles, Jason and Polly had a fight. I don’t know what it was about, but Polly was devastated. I came home from work one night that week and I heard the water running in the bath. I knocked on the door, and she didn’t say anything… I knocked and called and knocked and finally, I kicked the door down.”

Blood is beating in Betty’s ears. “There was—you don’t want to know what I saw. I think about it every day. But we sent Polly away to keep her from trying to take her own life again.”

She’s imagined a lot of possibilities.  _ Not well  _ in Alice Cooper lingo certainly insinuated mental health problems. But somehow she thought that if it had become so drastic, they would have told her. That they would have called her in California and suggested that she come home. Instead, Polly is  _ god  _ knows where, not just devastated by a boy, but by his death, too?

“Can I… I haven’t even talked to her.” 

Her father turns, steeled. How has he kept this from her? How have they lied  _ all  _ this time? “We thought she would be able to come home soon but—we told her about Jason the other week. When they found the body. And she’s had a big setback. Polly is not doing well enough to have calls or visits right now.” 

Suddenly, she is so tired, so purely overwhelmed, that she can’t see straight. 

“Do you want to help me replace the drive belt?” Hal says, somewhere in her fogged vision. 

“No thanks, Dad.” Betty turns on her heel and heads for her room. 

  
  
  
  
  


She dials Jughead from her closet, wrapped in his flannel and pressing the cuff up to her nose.

“Hey,” he answers, his voice muffled. Betty wonders if the reception is bad in the closet, but her dad doesn’t fall asleep with a sleeping pill and a glass of wine like Alice does, so she has to be extra cautious. 

“Where are you?” she asks. 

“I’m kind of crashing at Toni’s,” he admits. Betty reminds herself that if there were anything going on between Toni and Jughead, he probably wouldn’t have answered her call on the second ring.  _ You don’t know anything about him.  _

Still, the less she knows, the easier it is to hold onto the illusion that this is more than an exchange of information. Maybe it’s not elicit, but Betty has never called a boy at bedtime on a regular basis.

“It’s not drugs, Jug. Or maybe it is. But when I pressed my dad… he told me about Polly and Jason having a fight and my sister trying to hurt herself. Kill herself.” She doesn’t cry; she has not cried yet. It might be too shocking, too surreal. She can’t imagine it—it sounds like a story you read in a book or see on TV, even though she knows statistically that such things happen every day.

“Betty…” Jughead says, “I’m so, so sorry. Are you okay?”

She swallows, her mouth incurably dry. “Yeah I just… I needed to tell someone. I wanted to call her, but my dad said she’s been pretty fragile since they told her Jason died.” Or he’s lying. She can’t trust them, and it’s worse to realize than she thought. “Jug, I need answers. I need to know what Jason was running from, and what Polly might have gotten involved in.”

Jughead sighs. “I’m having Toni ask around. She has more… range.”

Betty doesn’t know if she can ask what that means, but it’s  _ something _ to know that Serpent or not, he doesn’t have a litany of dealers in his contact list. Jughead switches gears.

“I just keep thinking—selling drugs sounds more like a means to an end for Jason than the end itself. Like, the Blossoms are kind of… monsters, right? But what, specifically, would set a rich teenager running from his luxurious life?”

Maybe he’s monologuing for her benefit, but it’s comforting. Betty rubs the cuff of his flannel against her lips. 

“Maybe we should keep asking around,” she says.

Jughead sighs. “You are  _ not _ fake dating the entire water polo team. We don’t have time for that. We’ll ask Jason himself.”

Betty laughs, incredulous. “You don’t strike me as someone who puts a lot of stock in communicating beyond the veil.” 

“No, Betty.” She can hear him smiling, now. “I’m talking about Jason’s bedroom. At Jason’s memorial. Come on, I’ll be your plus one, or whatever.  _ It’s a date.” _

She knows he’s just riffing on her. It’s a tease. But she’s grateful that over the phone he doesn’t catch the way her heart beats a little louder when he says it. 

  
  
  
  


The week drags by; it’s a bye week for the Bulldogs and Cheryl’s mood wavers from vicious to distraught in the blink of an eye, either cancelling or extending Vixen’s practices at the drop of a hat. There are no online posts from  _ The Blue and Gold.  _ Jughead ghosts her texts all day on Thursday, only to email her in the evening:  **_sorry, I had to get a new phone number kind of suddenly. can you text me at this number—? and let me know who it is so I don’t send any Super Secret Plans into the wrong hands ;) -JJ_ **

She reads the message while gnawing on the end of her pen, supposedly doing her Spanish project (which Veronica has offered to check her grammar on). The sound of Veronica’s persistent whining about agreeing to sleepover at Thornhill the night before Jason’s memorial is partially drowned out by the prospect of constructing an equally cute and witty text back to Jughead. 

“She’s going through it, obviously. I feel like she doesn’t have that many actual friends,” Veronica says.

Betty scoffs, but swallows back her  _ I wonder why  _ jab, knowing that Veronica is working on being a better person, and it certainly takes that to befriend Cheryl. 

“What are you smiling at anyway?” 

Pretending she has not heard the question, Betty asks, “Since you’re going to Thornhill, do you think you could—”

“Oh no, you and beanie boy have some kind of mission for me, don’t you?” It’s teasing, but Betty kisses her teeth in annoyance anyways. 

“No! Just… let me know if you see anything weird.” Betty turns her attention back to her notes on government vocabulary, correcting her own spelling of  _ resistencia.  _

“Weird how? It’s Cheryl Blossom's gothic mansion. I don’t think anything is going to be the typical fare, exactly.”

Betty pauses, debating whether it will ruin anything to let Veronica in. “Weird like… according to Trev, Jason was selling drugs before he disappeared.”

Veronica blinks, looking over her shoulder, even though her mom is working a shift at Pop’s—there’s no one to overhear them. “Did you talk to Jughead about it?”

“Why did you ask like that?”

Her friend blinks, and Betty realizes that Veronica is not, actually, very good at lying. “Nothing.”

“What are you trying to say, V? Because if you don’t trust him, I’m not sure why you would have called him to come stop me from what we were going to do to Chuck.” She’s more worked up than she wants to be, but she thought Veronica, of all people, might not jump to judgement about Jughead.

“Nothing, B.” Veronica says, sighing a bit. “I never said I didn’t trust him. I just know that he has connections to the Serpents and that world, and I’m not sure that me poking around Cheryl’s house would do anything but upset her.”

It is all she can do not to bite back about  _ upsetting Cheryl  _ being the highest priority, but Betty knows she’s being defensive. “Sorry,” she murmurs. “I’m just feeling… he lives in this very different world and I always feel like the privileged idiot on the outside.”

Veronica’s gaze softens on Betty, and she reaches across the table to take her hand. “I don’t think he’s trying to hide anything. He probably just wants you to ask. Preferably while blinking those big green eyes at him.”

Groaning to muffle the wash of humiliation, Betty says,  _ “Stop.  _ It’s not like that.”

“It definitely  _ could  _ be like that if you wanted, my dear. I know things with Archie didn’t turn out like you had hoped. But don’t swear off putting your heart on the line. It’s what makes us feel alive.”

Betty rolls her eyes, but it’s Veronica’s advice she’s thinking of when she texts his new number:  **_hey it’s your date… i mean, “intelligence gathering mission partner.”_ **

She bursts into relieved laughter when he swiftly responds  **_that’s very macabre when you think about the fact that we’re going to a funeral. you’re darker than expected, betty cooper._ **

  
  
  
  


Of course the only black clothing Betty owns is a cardigan with sequins on it, a piece of clothing that exists to take any gritty edge off wearing the color black. Alice probably bought it for Polly to wear at Grandpa Smith’s funeral, but it will have to do. 

She should have borrowed something from Veronica while she could—now V is texting from Cheryl’s house with increasingly vague answers, starting with **_it’s a fucking Edgar Allan Poe story in here_** to a morning text check in of **_I’m good, honestly. Cheryl and I connected._**

(Betty wonders if  _ connected _ is supposed to be some kind of innuendo. Veronica has never said anything outright about her sexuality, but she knows firsthand Veronica had absolutely no hesitation about kissing Betty. She wondered what else it meant that she had no hesitation kissing Veronica back.)

Hal knocks on her door around 9:30 as Betty is putting her hair half up. “I need to stop at the Register, honey. Will you be ready soon?”

“No, I’ll get there with Archie or something,” she lies. “I’ll see you there.”

He hovers for a moment, and though Betty can’t see his face through the closed door, she can tell he’s thinking that her mom would not like them arriving separately. “I understand,” she layers on. “You’re going in order to cover it for the paper. I’m going in order to be with my friends. I’ll see you after, Daddy.” 

Half an hour later, her phone buzzes.  **_coast clear?_ **

Ensuring that Jughead’s shirt is stuffed safely into the back of her closet and no underwear is lying around her room, Betty skips downstairs to let him in. She’s not prepared for what she sees when she opens the door.

Jughead is wearing a suit. 

Obviously, it is the kind of thing that boys wear to events like this.

But it is not something she has ever pictured Jughead wearing. It’s just slightly too big, but somehow this makes him cuter, it shows the effort, even if it’s not really a date. Even if they’re going to investigate a dead classmate’s bedroom.

Jughead’s eyes dart sideways. “It was the best I could do,” he mutters sheepishly, hands fisted in his pockets, revealing suspenders. Betty realizes she’s grinning, that she can’t  _ stop  _ grinning, and Jughead returns it with a bashful smile of his own before looking sideways again. 

Betty’s just opening her mouth to invite him inside when the Andrews’ screen door closes with a clatter. Fred Andrews is in the driveway, calling out. “Jughead? Is that you?”

Glitching for a moment on the realization that obviously, if Archie and Jughead were childhood friends, Fred Andrews might recognize the beanie-wearing boy on her front porch. Betty sighs, realizing that unless they play nice, this will get back to her mother. Especially if, as she had originally intended, they ride together on Jughead’s motorcycle. 

If possible, Jughead looks probably even paler and more miserable than her. A heavy silence falls as Fred skirts the bushes in between their front yards. Gulping, Jughead opens his mouth and greets him, a bit weakly. “Hey, Mr. Andrews.”

Fred stops at the foot of the porch, staring with that sweet, disbelieving smile he used to put on for Betty as a kid, the one where she knew he was teasing her. “You two look nice. I—I didn’t realize you knew Jason Blossom, Jug.”

Jughead twists a lock of hair at the base of his neck, grinding his jaw. 

“Um, he doesn’t,” Betty interjects. “Just coming with me as a… favor. My mom is out of town and my dad wasn’t sure he’d make it so…” 

Jughead throws her a sharp look—obviously, it’s a terrible lie, but what does Fred care?

Nodding, with a slightly confused smile, Fred asks, “Well, would you two like a ride? Archie decided he’s going to come after all, and so I thought we ought to pay our respects as a family. I’m happy to take the both of you under my wing. Unless—”

His eyes dart to Jughead’s bike, parked a little awkwardly three houses down, to avoid suspicion. Jughead sees the connection grow in Fred’s eyes and stammers, “That sounds great Mr. Andrews, thank you.”

Jughead legs it down the steps and across the lawn, like he’s terrified of Fred touching him. 

“Hop in the cab, Betty. I’ll go grab Archie and we’ll get going,” Fred says, looking a little forlorn after Jughead.

Following directions from a trusted adult is programmed deeply into the hardwiring of her brain, so Betty slides in the back of the truck, where she finds Jughead with his hat off, head in hands. He sits up when she closes the door.

“Are you alright?” Betty asks, trying not to stare too much at his hair, which looks even thicker and glossier than she imagined. He stuffs the hat back on.

“It’s… I haven't talked to Fred in a long time. He and my dad were best friends in high school but… they got into a big fight a few years ago.”

She nods, confirming she knew some of this. “Do you think your dad will be mad if he finds out that you’re, like, here?”

Jughead shakes his head. “I’m not exactly talking to my dad either, right now.”

An involuntary  _ oh  _ escapes her lips, and Jughead’s head falls back into his hands. Despite how much she’s wanted a look into Jughead’s life, the raw edge in his voice, the intensity of such a statement is more than Betty had expected. All the pieces fit—maybe this is why he stays out late at Pop’s, or why he slept at Toni’s the other day. She wonders if his mom is around, or maybe if she works late, so those are the hours he avoids his dad. 

Betty lays her hand softly on Jughead’s arm without really thinking about what she’s doing. He flinches away for a moment, but then he sits up and lays his hand over hers. His fingers are long, smooth and cool. “Sorry,” he says, clearing his throat. “I just don’t want it to turn into a thing.”

Confused, Betty withdraws her hand even though she instantly regrets losing the contact. “Then why did you agree to ride with him? We can go, if you want, and just—”

Jughead shakes his head, stopping her. “No, it’s okay. I really like Mr. Andrews.” A small, sudden smile curls the corners of his lips, and it sounds like a total reversal of the whole conversation. Betty imagines that it’s complicated, and maybe too much to get into at the moment. 

In cosmic timing, Betty is reaching over again just as Archie and Fred get into the front seats. She snaps her hand back like it touched something hot, and tucks it under her leg.

  
  
  
  
  


Jughead shifts his disposition during the short car ride, talking so much that Fred can’t even ask any questions. He explains that he and Betty are actually covering the aftermath of Jason’s death for their blog, examining the ways it rocked their small town. Even Archie must sense that this is kind of a lie, but he’s too somber to make a comment about it. 

Betty rubs her sweaty palms against her dress as they pull into Thornhill’s severe front gate. She hasn’t been here since the night of the dance, which she knows was only weeks ago, but feels like another life entirely. 

Cars line the long drive even though it’s a bit early. They walk two by two—Betty and Jughead, followed by Fred and Archie. It’s not that Betty was going to try anything, like looping her arm through Jug’s, or taking his hand, but it’s a little disappointing to not even have the option, given that Archie and Fred are watching them. 

Thankfully, it seems they’ve arrived before her dad, so there isn’t a need to hide or separate outright. Betty is also less certain that Hal would note anything about Jughead at all, and might just assume he’s another school friend. They skirt past Penelope Blossom at the door, who is locked in a tense looking half-embarace with Hermione Lodge. Fred stops to wait for Hermione, so Betty marches them inside and finds a row with three vacant seats. 

Suddenly, their plan feels a lot riskier than Betty first realized. 

Archie gifts Mrs. Blossom with Jason’s jersey; there is a heartbreaking exchange where Penelope touches Archie’s hair. Veronica swans in from the doorway that—Betty assumes—will lead to Cheryl and Jason’s bedrooms. In all the milling, she almost misses the glimpse of her father at the bar, sharing words with Mr. Blossom. She wracks her brain for another time she’s seen them speak to each other and comes up with nothing. Of course, they probably grew up together, she realizes. Everyone is connected.

Before she can lean in and remark about the exchange to Jughead, she hears gasps and ringing silence. It’s Cheryl, clad in all white, gleaming in the sea of black. “Is that—” Jughead whispers, but he doesn’t need to finish. They can all recognize the dress from their collective image of Cheryl, drenched from the Sweetwater River, makeup streaked down her face. 

“Oh my god,” Veronica murmurs.  _ “Yes,”  _ Kevin says, suppressing total glee. 

Penelope and Clifford appear utterly stunned, perhaps even on the verge of violence. Calmly, Cheryl welcomes the guests, removing her gloves and speaking slowly and more vulnerably than Betty has ever seen.

_ He protected me. Every single day. I wish that day at the river I had protected him.  _ Betty pulses her nails into her palm. When Cheryl throws herself onto the coffin, it’s Veronica who stands and goes to her, drawing her into a tender hug. Again, Betty’s suspicions intensify, and Jughead casts a look of confusion to her.

As soon as they are dismissed by Penelope for the reception, Jughead stands and legs it down the aisle, reaching back and taking her by the hand. “Come on.”

  
  
  
  


He lets go of her hand promptly once outside the hall to stuff another salmon puff (or three) into his mouth. “You’re going to leave crumbs,” Betty hisses, taking the stairs two at a time to avoid being seen by the attendees already flowing out of the hall.

“Maybe that’s a good thing, Gretel,” he mumbles between swallows. “This house is fucking enormous. You could fit—Jesus.” Jughead interrupts himself when they round on a decidedly evil looking statue at the top of the east stairs. 

Betty tugs his suit sleeve away from the gargoyle and motions for him to check the rooms. Jughead returns to his rant. “Besides, this rich people food is free. I lost my job at the drive-in so I have to feed my growing boy appetite wherever I can.”

It sounds like a joke, but Betty can’t bring herself to give more than the shadow of a smile. “It’s got to be one of these.” Betty gestures to the first row of doors. 

Jughead looks at her uncertainly. “Okay. Wanna open one?”

Wringing her hands, Betty admits. “Not really.”

“Oh god, come on, we don’t have time to get freaked out  _ now.”  _ He steps to the second door, turning the knob slowly. Betty sidles up behind him to get a look over his shoulder.

The first thing she sees is a bed with a plaid pillow, then some football and water polo trophies to the right. Betty shivers. 

“You cold?”

Betty grits her teeth. “I mean, it’s spooky in here.”

Dryly, Jughead says, “Ahh, the icy chill of death.” But he places a hand on her shoulder for a moment, and in that second, Betty grows warm. 

They both take a beat before remembering the urgency of their mission. “Where does a teenage boy hide things?” Betty mutters.

Without hesitation, Jughead rattles off, “Under the mattress. The drawers. Behind the headboard, maybe… the closet.”

They start rustling, careful not to disrupt too much, but it’s clear that the room has already been gone through. It feels bare, missing the touches of life Betty thinks of in any kid’s room. Was it the police? The Blossom’s? Or Jason himself?

“Hello…” a voice cooes from behind them.

Betty’s not sure how she’s moving once her heart stops, but she backs up into Jughead, who grabs her by the shoulder, encircling her. An old woman rolls her wheelchair out from behind the door where apparently, Nana Rose Blossom prefers to lurk in the dark room of her deceased grandson. Suppressing a more violent shudder, Betty mutters, “We were just leaving.”

“Ohhhh,” she continues. “It’s  _ you.  _ It’s so lovely to see you again. I want to get a  _ good _ look at you.” 

Betty tiptoes forward, even though Jughead clamps down on her shoulder, struggling to let go. He follows like a tether behind Betty as she sits before Nana Blossom, figuring that it’s best just to let whatever delusion this is pass. 

The woman’s cold, knobbly hands reach for Betty’s left one and takes it in her grasp. “Of course you’re not wearing it,” she continues, fixing Betty with the cloudy blind eye. “Bless.”

Betty swallows. “Wearing what?”

Nana Rose hisses, “The  _ ring,  _ Polly. Keep it close to your heart and  _ don’t  _ tell Penelope I gave it to you. You know that old bat will come find you and snip it off your finger.”

Betty’s stomach bottoms out, and Jughead meets her with a wide-eyed look. 

“Excuse me,” Betty chokes, and darts for the door. Jughead stumbles to follow, Nana Rose croaking something at them from behind.

The hallway is still empty, but Jughead drags her hyperventilating body by the waist into a nearby bathroom anyway. Then his hand is on her shoulder again, and Betty closes her eyes and lets its weight ground her while she counts her inhales and exhales.

If she lets herself hug him, she’ll burst into sobs that never stop. Wiping the tracks of tears from her cheeks, Betty steps back, letting his hand drop off her shoulder. “I need to find my dad. I need to tell him, I—this doesn’t make sense. They can’t have broken up, not if she had a fucking heirloom Blossom ring.”

She steps forward and back, rocking more than pacing. Jughead’s eyebrows look permanently glued together. “Unless Jason tried to sell  _ that.”  _

He clears his throat. “Do… you want me to come with you?”

“Thank you, but I should do this alone. He wouldn’t like… he wouldn’t want all of this getting out. I need to see what he says.” She wants Jughead’s hand back, wants his whole arm and the safe cave of his collarbone to breathe into. 

Jughead nods. “Call me as soon as you do, okay?”

  
  
  
  
  


_ Destroying our family. Murdered your great grandfather. Stole our livelihood. Stay out of it.  _

Betty’s never seen her father so angry, but it seemed to come so easily, so naturally. She wonders if they have that in common, the anger pulsing under the skin at any given moment, hidden but susceptible when provoked. 

Hal has stormed out, so Betty figures she can, too.  **_Pops,_ ** she texts Jughead, and forgets a coat as she walks out the door. 

Her dad  _ knew.  _ For a few, delusional days, Betty had believed that maybe her father was not as vicious or vindictive as her mom, but now Betty’s not sure Alice could hold a candle to things Hal said about the Blossoms.

And just to indulge her stupid, hormone-addled hopes, he’s waiting for her in the Pop’s parking lot, leaned against his motorcycle. Betty props herself against the wide metal pole of the neon sign and relays the whole story. “Juggie,” her voice breaks a little. “I feel like I don’t even know who my mom and dad are anymore.”

Jughead makes a face, grim but almost amused. What she would give to know what he’s thinking. If he doesn’t understand her more than he lets on.

“And now you’re thinking there’s probably more that he lied about,” Jughead says. He’s definitely reading her mind, but it’s hard to go there, even with her crazy parents.

“You’re saying—how far do you think my dad would go to protect Polly?” Betty imagines them pinning a photo of Alice and Hal to the murder board. She’ll have to do it herself, tomorrow morning.

_ The murder board.  _ Jughead is nodding, slowly, but Betty’s mind whirs. She steps closer. “And whoever stole Sheriff Keller’s murder board wasn’t at the drive in. And knew that Sheriff Keller wouldn’t be home, because he’d be arresting Geraldine Grundy. Jug, my dad wasn’t at the drive-in.”

Jughead sighs, placing his hands on Betty’s arms—as if they’ve just hugged, even though they haven’t. The touch grounds her nevertheless. He’s not victorious about labeling her father a suspect; his eyes swim with sympathy. 

“I’ll buy you a burger,” he offers, a small sad smile creeping across his face. 

Betty shrugs. “I’m not really hungry.” But she doesn’t want to go home. “Can we go for a ride?”

Jughead’s eyebrows raise, but after a pause, he nods. “Where to?”

Betty shakes her head. She wants to go anywhere, somewhere that’s just a tiny pocket of the world with this person who she suddenly can’t be sane without. She has more thoughts about what’s next, what they need to do, plans they need to make, but right now Betty just wants to escape.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is no great way to handle Geraldine Gundy. I didn't write her out of the fic bc she's connected to themystery and I didn't want to replot. BUT if canon rewrites are your thing and you want to read like, my very favorite canon rewrite fic right now, Those Certain Detestable Acts is both AMAZING OVERALL and handles the Grundy situation as best as it can be done. 
> 
> As always, love to hear your thoughts if you have the moment! oxoxo


	5. five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what it is!!!! 1x06, Faster Pussycats, Kill Kill! via one adorable human disaster named Jughead Jones. I hope that this chapter features a delightful combination of reimagining, significant but delightful liberties, and Not Messing With Perfection. You know what I mean ;) ;) ;)
> 
> (also upon a recent reread, I have noticed my ability to catch typos on this fic is very lax, and i’m sorry.)

_ Well you were a magazine, I was a plain jane  
_ _ Just walking the sidewalks all covered in rain  
_ _ Love to just get into some of your stories  
_ _ Me and all of my plain jane glory  
_ **—gregory alan isakov**

* * *

In some ways, giving Betty a ride on the Honda is a far more agreeable task than buying her a burger with his leftover change from the laundromat. In others—well, Betty has no jacket, she’s wearing flats that are a joke in the protective footwear department, and despite the fact that her bare legs are giving him fucking heart palpitations, none of it is safe to wear on a motorcycle for more than a few blocks.

“You might have to go back home first. Or just, you know,  _ in general  _ start dressing for the weather,” he ribs, though immediately panics that she will think he notices her clothes more than a casual, observational amount.

“I left… a bit abruptly,” Betty excuses. “I can’t really go back and risk another fight with my dad. Besides, I told him I was going to Veronica’s. Can’t I just… borrow your shirt again?” She gestures to his waist.

“You’re going to clean me out of shirts, Betts.”

Betty gnaws her lip, trying not to look guilty. Sometimes, Betty appears cool as a cucumber, faking dates with jocks with an aplomb that unsettles something deep in his gut. But then other times he can’t believe she even  _ tries  _ to lie—she seems to turn pink very easily. “It’s in the laundry. I had to wait until my mom wouldn’t pick through everything,” she says.

Foreign, he thinks, a mother who does laundry. But he kind of wanted it back unwashed, to see if it smelled different. 

But now they have another obstacle to reckon with—finding Betty suitable protective clothes somewhere close enough that it won’t derail this spontaneous  _ take me away, Jughead  _ moment (which, if he botches, he may just sentence himself to a life of idiotic celibacy.) 

The one, clear answer of where he can acquire teenage girl clothes offers itself, but he cringes in advance to think of it. But Betty’s showing him her raw edges, so Jughead swallows and nods. “I have an idea, but we have to cut across the tracks.”

He’s usually not so euphemistic.  _ Can you handle walking into the Southside after dark,  _ is what he should have said.  _ Will you freak out when I lead you into a trailer park? _

Of course, he shouldn’t be surprised that Betty is game. They cut behind Pop’s—a shortcut so worn from years of Sunnyside kids biking and running through the woods. Betty hisses twice—some brush scrapes her leg, and she steps in a puddle with one of her flats. “Sorry,” he offers. “It’s just a lot faster this way.”

They come out of the wooded patch on the north end of Sunnyside. Jughead watches Betty examine her surroundings the same way she cataloged the Blossom house—the journalist’s objectivity melts his heart a little, if he’s honest. There is no judgement, at least not yet, and it sends his shoulders down from his ears by half an inch. 

He skirts around the edge of the trailer park, avoiding the chance that he’ll even come into view of his dad’s place, even if the chances of FP being home at peak White Wyrm hours are decidedly slim. 

“Toni’s?” Betty guesses when he stops them in front of a double wide near the northeast edge of the park. Thomas acts as a quasi-manager, keeping things in line without ever stirring shit up. Which really means that despite FP likely owing months on months of rent, he still lets Jughead sleep here for free. He’s a good man. 

Betty clutches her elbows and shivers, and Jughead has the immediate, strong impulse to hug her, which he curbs. 

“Um, yeah. Do you want to come in? Or…” he trails off, not sure if he could just  _ invite _ Betty into Thomas Topaz’s house. He and Thomas are friendly, but Jughead is always afraid to tread on toes, to veer too closely towards being a burden or a nuisance. 

Betty seems to read his hesitation. “Maybe I should just… stay out here. Not make it weird.” Her hands curl into little fists and he’s tempted to hold them, to ease the tension, to reassure her _.  _ “I mean, it’s probably already weird. We don’t have to do this, I can just go—” Another shiver ripples up her spine.

“Stop,” he interrupts. “Toni doesn’t care. But, um, here,” Jughead shrugs off his jacket and swings it around Betty’s shoulders. “I’ll be right back.”

Wide-eyed, Betty slips her arms into the sleeves. They hang a little too long on her arms, and Jughead feels a pressure in his chest, like something is squeezing his heart. “I’ll be right back,” he repeats, and then winces, realizing he already said that. Betty Cooper should absolutely never be allowed to wear any of his clothing ever again, or he will spend the rest of his days with exactly one operating brain cell.

The front door is open, which means Toni is home—she always forgets to lock it. “Hey T,” he calls, walking towards her room. He stops short, realizing he doesn’t want the repeat of walking in on her  _ with _ anybody, like the incident with Peaches last summer, and calls out, “All clear?”

In response, the door wrenches open. “God, chill, why are you yelling?”

Jughead’s shoulders inch up again. “Um, I need to borrow some clothes.” 

Toni blinks at him, giving him the look he imagines every teen movie older sister gives their annoying, nonsensical little sibling. “I’m gonna need a little more info than that.”

_ Right.  _ He stuffs his hands into his pockets, missing his usual extra layer. “Do you have any size seven boots? And maybe some pants? Like… Smallish medium?”

Toni smashes her lips together, trying to compose herself. “Oh my fucking god.  _ Please  _ tell me you did not leave that girl standing out in the cold.” Toni pushes past him and to the door, swinging it open and calling, “Betty, please ignore the utter rudeness of our friend here and get your ass inside!” 

She holds the door with one hand and turns to whisper, “I swear to god if you get laid because of me, you owe me Pop’s milkshakes for a  _ lifetime,  _ Jones.” 

Betty practically tiptoes inside, those engrained manners looking around to see if she should take her shoes off or leave them on. Jughead can’t help but smile. Slipping off her muddy flats, Toni’s eyebrows fly up. “Jughead may be a total idiot, but I’m glad he didn’t let you on that bike in those. I mean, I’m assuming that’s what this is about?” She lobs this question at him, which he answers with a tiny, bashful nod.

“Thank you, Toni,” Betty gushes. “I got into a really weird fight with my dad and ran out in stupid shoes and—god, sorry, I’m overexplaining this—”

Toni clucks her tongue, folding her arms. “Girl, you’re fine, clearly this is already the home for wayward youths,” she says waving vaguely towards Jughead. He looks down, cracks his knuckles. Maybe this was the real reason he didn’t invite Betty in—Toni was unpredictable, a bit too all-knowing when it came to, well, his entire life story and attempts at maintaining some element of privacy.

But Betty is smiling—her real, cheek-aching grin, not the plastered on Stepford smile she walked in with. That alone makes him more than a little grateful for Toni Topaz. “Come on, let’s get you sorted,” Toni commands, taking Betty by the arm and marching her into the bedroom. 

They’re in there for longer than Jughead thinks is necessary for a quick change, and he has to wander into the kitchen to avoid pressing his ear to the bedroom door. In the fridge, he finds a jar of pickles, a few rogue slices of american cheese, and the butt ends of some summer sausage to munch on as a distraction tactic. 

It’s probably only five minutes, but it feels like twenty when Toni calls out, “Alright Biker Betty is ready. Oh—right, gloves. And honestly, take my helmet, too. It has a face shield.”

In very unfortunate timing, a piece of pickle gets lodged in his throat as a result of glancing at Betty, who is wearing  _ way  _ tighter jeans, combat boots, and Toni’s brown leather jacket—the one sans gang emblem. It is conditioning,  _ programming  _ in his brain to find this look very,  _ very  _ hot, even if he’s wondering, a little bit, what his friend has done with Betty Cooper and her soft, pale sweaters. 

The choking incident, at least, gives him the excuse to turn away and cough, to compose himself. Eyes watering, Jughead tries not to look at her legs again. “Thanks, Toni,” he offers, and books it to the door before anything else horrifically embarrassing happens. 

Toni murmurs something low to Betty, and Betty smiles gleefully—the kind of exchange that, Jughead notes with an impassive huff, is only shared between girls. He closes his eyes, trying to remember that this will be worth it. Maybe. He might be paying a humiliation tax from Toni for the rest of his life. 

“Be safe, kids!” Toni calls as the screen door slams shut. 

Alone again, wrapped in his jacket, Jughead feels marginally more relaxed. As they trudge back to Pop’s parking lot, Jughead can’t help but ask, “Did Toni… she didn’t make you feel weird, did she?”

“No, no,” Betty insists. “She’s very… sweet, honestly. I asked for some sweats and she, well, wanted to make me look the part I guess.”

Jughead scoffs. “I just mean… Southside kids talk trash about Northsiders. I mean, not without warrant. I didn’t invite you in because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Betty’s response is a little uncharacteristically bald. “I’m more uncomfortable with tiptoeing around things. Toni knows we’re different, she puts it right out on the table, and it doesn’t bother her. I like that. I don’t like being handled like glass.”

It doesn’t sound like an accusation. Anyway, he’s known this about Betty, intuitively, for a while now. But wherever it’s coming from, whatever is drawing it out of her, Jughead acknowledges by reaching over and squeezing her shoulder.

“What did you talk about, then?”

Betty smiles. “Toni Morrison.”

_ Girls talk about books, not you, dipshit.  _ He laughs to himself. “Of course.”

It’s nearly dark by the time they get back to the Honda, but Betty shows no loss of determination. The helmet squishes her cheeks a little, and it’s hard not to chuckle, but she swats him for it and pretends like she’s not going to get on. Almost like she knows that the absence of her touch has become a punishment. 

“I’m not going easy on you this time,” he teases.  _ I know you don’t need to be handled like glass.  _

Betty’s lips are bright pink from the friction of her teeth. “I’m hard to scare.”

“Secret thrill seeker, what would your mother say?” 

Betty shudders. “Let’s hope we never find out.”

He knows that she’s joking, but the words feel a bit like a dagger, puncturing a balloon in his stomach. “But um, do you have a curfew or something?”

Betty sighs. “Before my dad comes back from the office? I’m not sure. They usually work late and I’m usually not…” She doesn’t finish the sentence. “Why, do you?”

“Toni’s couch doesn’t keep strict hours,” he says, which is as close as he’ll get to admitting that no one gives a fuck when he comes or goes. Betty hadn’t even asked the question seriously. Maybe it’s just getting harder to lie all the time; this vulnerability slips out before he could catch it.

The first place he considers driving to is the clearing near Sweetwater, but then he’s hit with the unwelcome mental image of Archie and the music teacher’s summer  _ tete a tete. _ There’s a spot his dad used to take them for picnics; the road is winding and night has all but fallen, but he’s a responsible driver. “You ready?” he asks.

Betty nods, climbing on the back. She doesn’t hesitate this time to slip her arms around his waist. This, Jughead realizes, is a  _ thing.  _ As improbable as it ought to be, Betty Cooper—editor-in-chief, River Vixen, future president of the RHS student council—could be anywhere she wants right now, and she’s choosing, despite all obstacles, to be here.

The rush of riding never really grows dull, but it’s heightened with the anchor of Betty’s arms around him, the feeling of her helmet pressed against his shoulder blade. He takes a slightly hilly county road, letting the swoops of the drive augment the dips in his stomach. Even in the dark, there are enough lights along this part of the river from the Sweetwater mansions, both the new and the old. 

He parks, and pauses as Betty dismounts. When her legs wobble, he’s probably too hasty to reach out and steady her by the elbow, but it leads to a beat between them.  _ This is a thing,  _ he thinks again, but the reality, the possibility, seems too overwhelming to act on. It’s just… fast. A few weeks ago, Betty put herself out there for Archie, someone who could not be much more different than Jughead. 

It is one thing to admit that he wants to kiss Betty Cooper very, very badly. It is something else entirely to take that plunge. To resurface and realize this will solve exactly none of his problems. That the rest of his friends might not all be as amiable as Toni about it. To reckon with what kind of relationship they can realistically have with her parents breathing down her neck and communicating a hearty disapproval. The last time Alice and Harold Cooper didn’t like their daughter’s boyfriend… 

_ He ended up dead, with the investigation notes stolen.  _ Jughead shudders, the connection between them breaks. “You cold?” Betty asks, a teasing lilt to her voice.

The corners of Jughead's lips still have other ideas about Betty. “Just from the wind.”

“You’re right,” she confesses. “You’re a good driver. Did you learn from…”

Leading them to the banks, squatting down on a rock, he squats down on a rock with a grunt. “Yeah, my dad.” It feels unnecessary to add that his father is a Serpent, whether because he still doesn’t want to know how she would react, or because at this point it seems a bit obvious, if unspoken.

“Is it his? The bike?”

“No,” Jughead answers. “My friend Fangs does mechanic work as a side job. We fixed it together about a year ago. Sometimes it still runs like shit, but it's wheels.”

Betty’s eyes brighten, even in the dark. “I would love to see the engine sometime. We—my dad and I—work on cars. Well, one car, particularly. I’ve always liked mechanics, even though I think it makes my mom terrified I’ll do something unthinkable, like go to trade school instead of Yale.” She punctuates this thought with a roll of the eyes. 

“Grease monkey and 4.0, folks, she does it all.” And if he’s honest, he folds up all these dualities of hers and tucks them away for further pondering. 

A comfortable silence settles between them, filled in with the subtle roar of the river’s current. There are plenty of ways to draw out their time—more teasing, further confessions of childhood memories that ribbon their way through present problems. But ultimately, they are here for one reason, the strongest bond between them. 

“We need to talk to Polly,” Jughead posits.

Betty hums in agreement, looking out across the river. “I was thinking about  _ how _ on the drive. I have a feeling my mom wouldn’t keep any readily available records—she’s a journalist. Nothing that can’t be destroyed.”

Jughead chews on this. “Cash?”

“Probably checks—inpatient facilities aren’t cheap.” He feels her shiver beside him. “But my mom would need a pretty  _ serious _ distraction to let me anywhere near her checkbook for long enough.”

A chorus of crickets sing before her implication dawns on him. “But your mom hates me.”

Betty tsks. “She doesn’t  _ know  _ you.”

“Hello, Mrs. Cooper, I have a fucking weird name and I go to Southside High . Can you show me to your china cabinet for a moment?”

She’s shaking with laughter, and the levity acts as a brief but thorough distraction. “If you drop in unexpectedly, she’ll be totally taken aback. She’s very… thorough at interviewing. She’ll want to ask everything about you.”

The problem is that Jughead isn’t so sure that he’s  _ new  _ to Mrs. Cooper, given how she banned her daughters from playing with him as a child. A reintroduction just feels like a potential nail in the coffin of their journalism partnership… or whatever this is, exactly.

Betty lets her laughter trail into a sigh. Jughead notices her slight shiver, even with the jacket on. The wind blows her hair back and forth. He’s never seen it down before; there are a few kinks and curls from the ponytail. “We should go. If you’re cold.”

Shaking her head slowly, Betty studies the river. It gives him an excuse to keep looking at her. “Before my parents had Polly taken away, she would talk about running from Riverdale. She did it once, when we were little. For a day. I never understood her urge until now.”

Jughead nods. He can’t say the same, exactly. But his father has been threatening for him to  _ see how you’d like it on your own, boy  _ for long enough that he understands. There is a catharsis to steering into the spin and seeing where you land. 

Instead he says, “You don’t seem very alike.” He’s referring, mostly, to someone who would date Jason Blossom. Then again, he reminds himself. She’s a fucking cheerleader. 

Betty laughs with no lack of sardonicism. “I always thought we seemed like our birth order was switched. Like she was the younger one, somehow both kind of shy and rebellious. And I was responsible and rule following and  _ good  _ but not because I really tried that hard. Still... I miss her.” Betty’s voice gets tight, and Jughead feels a familiar strain on his chest. 

Something possesses him to blurt, “I have a sister, too.”

Betty’s eyes flash at him, correctly deducing that this is not information he shares readily with people who do not know him well. “She’s nine. And I miss her, too.”

Nodding, slowly, Betty murmurs an apology. She doesn’t ask any follow up questions. Which is perhaps why Jughead adds, “She’s in Toledo, staying with my grandparents.”

Betty’s hand finds the crook of his elbow and squeezes. Jughead doesn’t know why he puts it this way, except that it is easier.  _ You didn’t have to say anything at all. _

He didn’t have to take her to Sunnyside either. He wanted to. 

  
  
  
  


They make a plan. He will arrive in the morning for breakfast. Jughead sleeps soundly on the lumpy pull out at the Topaz’s, ignoring Toni’s subtle questions about Betty and dozing off with the memory of her arms around his waist. 

In the morning, he parks the bike out of sight from the Cooper house, not wanting to immediately trip the alarm bells in Alice Cooper’s  _ protect Betty  _ instinct. 

When Mrs. Cooper answers the door, Jughead is a little bit overwhelmed to see her up close, hair perfectly set, eyebrows defined, bearing a face of make-up that wouldn’t be out of place on a television anchorwoman. It is every bit as fearsome and fascinating as he’d imagined. “Good morning, Jug-head,” she greets. Betty hovers in the background, posture ramrod straight, ponytail perfectly curled.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Cooper. Thank you so much for—” he scrambles for a beat, looking for the right word. “Hosting me this morning.”

Mrs. Cooper preens, though he still senses that she’s studying him, searching for something, performing an inventory of all his features and gestures. 

Betty’s mom leads the way into the dining room, where the table is arrayed like the rest of the ‘complete breakfast’ in a nineties cereal commercial: fruit, a massive pitcher of orange juice, toast, and pancakes. Jughead wills his stomach not to growl audibly. His breakfast usually consists of whatever state issue meal bags are presented in the lobby of Southside High to serve the free-and-reduced-lunch population, which is everybody. This is a lot better than a Super Donut. 

Not that he’s picky these days. 

Because Alice’s eyes seem trained on his every move, he tries to eat slowly—or perhaps the normal pace of a normal person. Betty, Jughead notices, picks at her grapefruit and glares at her mother.

Finally, Mrs. Cooper stops stirring her tea. “So, Jughead. I suppose I have you to thank for Betty’s sudden obsession with writing about all this Jason Blossom ghoulishness.” Her tone is so calm and observational, Jughead doesn’t know if he’s supposed to feel slighted. 

“Actually, Mom,” Betty interjects, meeting her mother’s intensity beat for beat. “I was the one who reached out to Jughead for help. We’re both running understaffed newspapers. It was my idea to join forces.”

Alice giggles, and Jughead gulps his orange juice with slight terror. “Relax, Betty. I’m just making conversation with your friend.” Betty’s jaw clenches. Jughead recognizes a new, frequent impulse to cup her face with his hand and relax the tension there.

She meets his eye with a minute quirk of her eyebrow. He sets the juice glass down. “Um, do you have a bathroom I could—”

“Yes,” Betty chirps. “I’ll show you.”

Alice pushes herself up. “No, no, dearest, I’ll show him. Follow me, Jug-head.” He rises and slinks behind her, casting only a half glance back. Alice veers down the hall and stops, suddenly, blocking his path.

“I’m not saying this because of where you go to school. Or where you might live. Or who you might be related to.” This draws a frown on his face in a way he can’t control. It is hard to tell what she’s implying, throwing out these caveats that only serve to remind him of the gulf between Betty’s life and his own. “My daughter is a very serious student. I hope you are willing to commit to the rigors this project will require to garner the kind of academic attention to propel you both forward after high school.” 

Jughead swallows. “Of course.”

With an icy smile, Alice steps aside and allows him into the bathroom.

Minutes later, he’s back at the table with nothing amiss, but Betty smiles genuinely when she sees him. “We should get going, Jug.” Tamping down a forlorn sigh at his unfinished pancakes, Jughead nods in agreement. He thanks Alice again, leaving with the feeling that she’s still memorizing his every move.

Halfway down the block, Betty finally gushes, “I got pictures of her checkbook. I’ll do some searching during lunch and then we’ll meet after school—I mean, if you can?” He nods.

“Okay then, um, so I’ll see you at… Pop’s? Or the drive-in? Southside?”

Jughead bristles at the idea of Betty popping up after school like Veronica had last week. Despite their latenight forays, he’s not ready to breach that line. He also squirms at the Twilight suggestion. It’s closed. And why did she know he spends undue time there? (Well, he amends. Spent.) “Um, Pop’s or the Blue and Gold? I’ll need the internet.”

  
  
  
  
  


He’s texting Betty under the table at lunch, pretending to listen to Sweet Pea dish about Ghoulie drama overheard in the English class Jughead missed most of after his breakfast mission.  **_I’m so hungry, all I ate was that stupid grapefruit._ **

Nothing compels Jughead like commiserating over hunger. And he’s relieved that the grapefruit for breakfast thing was more about nerves and deception than some kind of diet.  **_well the southside fare today is inedible, aka “beef stroganoff” that even I, the iron stomach, will not suffer. i’ll bring snacks._ **

“What are you smiling at?” Sweet Pea snaps, clearly crabby that Jughead isn’t listening to his monologue. Jughead shrugs, which only incites him more. “Don’t be coy, Jones.”

Jughead stares him down for a few beats. He wonders if Toni has said anything. She tends to be a vault; she likes her own privacy, too. “Do you have any money?”

Pea sighs. “My secrecy cannot be bought,” he pouts, but he hands Jughead a five-dollar bill. 

Jughead holds up a hand with all five fingers raised. “I’m meeting someone later.” He ticks off a finger. “She’s a northsider.” Another finger. “She’s helping me with the Jason Blossom shit. I need to buy snacks. Because it’s my fault she didn’t eat breakfast.” Jughead stops, realizing he’s unintentionally made it sound like  _ my fault _ was some kind of sex act. 

Sweet Pea’s eyebrows shoot up, and he puts another dollar on the table. “So you like the blonde cheerleader girl.” Jughead pushes the bill back, biting his tongue to keep from correcting his friend with her name. Sweet Pea slides the dollar towards him again. “Does she know you’re a Serpent?”

Hesitating, Jughead accepts the dollar, hoping this is the last one Pea has. “No. But it’s not like I’m around that much lately.”

His friend rolls his eyes before slapping another bill on the table. “Does she know who your father is?”

_ Hot cheetos,  _ he thinks.  _ So many hot cheetos.  _ He pockets the dollar. “The Northside kids have a very faint understanding of our lifestyle. They don’t know names of washed up dudes in leather, they’ve been taught to run from that shit.”

Sweet Pea reaches into his pocket. “This is my last one.” Jughead smirks. 

“If you take this one, you have to promise me you won’t stall out. You gotta make a fucking move on her, Jug. Otherwise you gotta pay me back. With interest. Like 100% interest.” 

Jughead wants to snap back, but his throat feels like it’s closing up. He’s dug himself into a completely undignified hole just to buy some fucking juice and pretzels and not appear like the homeless dipshit he is to the girl he likes.

Then again, he knows Pea won’t hold him to it. This is an excuse for him to feel like a good friend. To absolve himself of guilt for  _ not  _ being kicked out of his childhood home. Maybe he feels like he’s investing in something, in some hope that Jughead might make it out of this shit cycle. With as much of his tarnished pride as he can, Jughead folds the last dollar up with the others. “Okay,” he agrees, swallowing the flutter in his stomach.

  
  
  
  
  


“Sisters of Quiet Mercy,” Betty reads. “What is that?”

They’ve been web searching every line item in Alice Cooper’s checkbook for over half an hour, going back months and months. Betty’s been tense ever since he arrived, though he can tell the pretzels have helped. 

(She also took off her cardigan, revealing her gold shirt to be a tank top. He hasn’t seen this much of her shoulders since the Chuck Clayton incident, and it’s distracting. Especially when she leans over his shoulder while he searches.)

“A church? A charity?”

Tearing his eyes away from her collarbone, Jughead types into Sleuthster. “No.” He clicks the homepage. The name rings a bell. “A home for troubled youths.” The website has a sinister vibe. He reads the mission statement, every word souring more and more on his tongue. “Where disenfranchised youths will learn such virtues as discipline and respect, leading lives of quiet reflection and servitude.”

This does not sound like a hospitable place for a teenager recovering from a suicide attempt or her boyfriend’s murder. Betty whispers, “Poor Polly.”

Jughead tries to meet her eye to offer a sympathetic look, but she’s already spinning away, pacing. “I think I need some air.”

He nods, shutting his laptop and following her lead out to the lawn. It’s still warm in the sunshine, the last days of September that will snuff out in a week or two when the full brunt of fall hits. It’s disappointing when she shrugs her sweater back on. They walk in silence, and Jughead digs out a bag of potato chips to cope.

After plunking down at a picnic table, Betty sighs. “It’s been months, Jug, of me prodding my parents, begging them to tell me where Polly is. And you know what? I don’t care what they want to shield me from. I miss my sister.” He hasn’t seen Betty’s eyes light up quite like this since she first proposed their investigation merger. He feels compelled to follow her wherever this trail leads.  _ For the story.  _ Or not. He’s not really lying to himself about how he feels when she opens up like this. That it’s to him, of all people, for some reason.

Suddenly, their bubble bursts. “What are you guys talking about?” Archie plops down across from them, slinging his guitar case with one arm and his football helmet with the other. “Can I help?”

Jughead jumps to explain, throwing out a joke to disguise the reality of their conversation. Whether it’s to protect Betty’s confidence in him or grant Archie plausible deniability in whatever they’re about to attempt with Polly, he’s not sure. “Top secret, man. What we’re planning is a stealth operation. If we go in there with the whole scooby gang... the entire mission will be compromised.” He brushes the salt from his fingers and catches Betty staring at his hands. 

She jolts back to attention. “And don’t you have to practice for the variety show?” A quick diversion. He’s relieved to know Betty might be equally protective of their bubble.

Archie looks behind him, where a tall, skinny girl that Jughead vaguely recognizes as Valerie, a member of the Pussycats, sinks down next to Archie on the picnic bench. There is a clear unspoken exchange between them, and Betty looks poised to introduce everybody before Archie glumly asserts, “Actually, I don’t. I didn’t get a spot.”

A regal declaration of, “Yes, you did,” sings out of nowhere as Veronica and Kevin appear. The three of them seem to fuss over the particulars of Archie’s audition (which Jughead is assuming went badly) and Kevin’s discretion as the director of said variety show (which Jughead assumes is not readily stomped on by anyone, even Veronica’s designer heels). Betty’s eyes glaze over, clearly feeling on the outside of the fiasco. Jughead doesn’t blame her; she’s got bigger things to worry about. 

The only nonverbal language of comfort he knows is food, so Jughead raises his eyebrows and holds up the chip bag. Betty smiles fractionally and nods, so Jughead shakes out a handful for her. The next thing he hears is Betty asking, clearly amused, “Veronica, I didn’t know that you could sing.”

Jughead snaps himself back to the supposed topic du jour, which has suddenly devolved into a lot of eye contact between Veronica and Archie. Val seems to vy for a glance from Archie.  _ What is it about this guy? _

And yet, it’s impossible to hate Archie for it. That is, maybe deep down, Jughead knows that whatever the magnetism is, he’s not totally immune. 

  
  
  
  
  


They decide to visit The Sisters of Quiet Mercy in two days, so Betty won’t miss a quiz and Jughead can give his history presentation. 

He tries not to reply to her texts too quickly; he doesn’t want to burn through his cheap ass pre-paid cell plan limit too fast (again). But she’s funny and sarcastic and impossible to ignore.  **_Jug, I can’t keep up with this drama. Veronica is now a Pussycat, Archie might be dating Val, who QUIT the cats, and Kevin is stressing out about how to bill the act._ **

Thursday morning, they agree to take the bus. Jughead proposes the motorcycle, but Betty argues that it will make them conspicuous. He agrees.  **_Bikers are hardly quiet, reflective, or prone to servitude._ **

He finds Betty at the bus stop, clutching her firsts inside her raincoat. Her ponytail looks a little off center. Impulsively, he settles a hand on her back and keeps it there, moving slowly up and down until the bus pulls up a couple minutes later. They sit side by side on the bus; it’s quiet and not very crowded.

They don’t say much; it’s early and the rain feels like more than enough sensory background noise. It’s not unpleasant or awkward, and their upper arms press together as the bus jostles. When they hit a bump, about ten minutes into the ride, Betty steadies herself by grabbing his wrist. It reminds him of the back of Fred Andrew’s truck, the warm flash of surprise and desire that clutched him when they touched. When she draws her hand away, he reaches to capture it again, squeezing for a beat.

When they disembark, forty minutes later, Betty’s eyes immediately well with tears.

The Sisters of Quiet Mercy has dark, giant windows that reflect only a gray glow from the clouded sky. There are no flowers, no welcoming signs, no appearance of softening the harsh institutional architecture. “Hey,” he reaches for her shoulder. “Don’t judge a home for troubled youths by it’s facade.” 

Betty’s mouth moves, like she’s trying to smile at his poor excuse for a comforting joke, but it has the effect of a grimace. “My parents have been keeping Polly here for  _ months.  _ While I was just out here, living my life! If I had known she was staying at a place like this…” Betty chokes again on her own small sobs. 

“Hey,” Jughead interrupts again, his hand planting even more firmly, thumb soothing along her shoulder blade. “Now you’re doing something about it.” Her head wobbles, and her weight gives in for a fraction of a second, leaning into his touch. But a moment later, she’s upright again, focused. 

“Come on, let’s go get some answers,” he prompts, and Betty reaches up to tighten her ponytail. Her face fixes with determination, and Jughead thinks he’s honestly never been more enamored of anyone in his life. Yes, Betty Cooper is long, cheerleader legs and an enviable curled ponytail, but she is grit and courage; he’d never make it this far without her.

  
  
  
  
  


They have to wait. The dour sister at the front desk steps away after a solid minute of eagle eyeing them, and Betty lets out a long, shaky breath. His hand sweats with the urge to hold hers, but he doesn’t. They’re in fists anyway, like she’s fending off such a gesture. A few moments later, the sister comes back and beckons Betty to follow. Finally, he braves the space between them for a brief squeeze on her shoulder. 

An orderly replaces the nun at the desk, and Jughead feels the orderly’s eyes on him a few times every minute, as if he’s assessing how much Jughead might belong in a place like this. He suppresses a memory of visiting Fangs in a group home one summer in middle school, the smell of industrial cleaner and hopelessness. This place is mustier, and definitely infected with an eeriness that feels deeply connected to Catholicism (though, he checked, and The Sisters are not associated with the Church, which is potentially even more unsettling). 

He reminds himself to unclench his jaw, to focus on being here for Betty and not the demons lurking in the pool of fear, the water levels of _how much longer can I lie like this_ rising every day. There is nothing to do; he cannot look at his phone, full of texts from Toni asking **_where are you_** over and over, and finally **_found someone who might know more about jason dealing_**. He can’t think about that right now. 

Betty’s not gone for half an hour before Alice Cooper breezes through the front door, not seeming to notice him until she stalks past and growls, “Get up. Follow me.” Jughead doesn’t have time to separate out his reaction of  _ how did she get here so fast  _ and  _ fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck— _ his heart just hammers against his throat. __

Alice marches past the orderly without seeming to need any security protocol. Jughead trails her down a long, dim hallway to a room guarded by the same nun from the desk. She glares at him, a silent warning to stop short of entering the room after Alice. It doesn’t matter—the Cooper women have a natural volume that even the convent’s stone walls cannot impede.

Their interaction is curt, and only a minute later, Alice drags Betty out by the hand. Betty whips her head back to find him. “I tried to call, the signal—” Alice yanks hard, and Betty stumbles. Bile rises in Jughead’s stomach. The orderly that appears beside him gives a warning look, so Jughead mimics Betty’s fists and stays back, following the staccato of Alice’s footsteps back down the hall. 

Betty tosses one more look behind, but he can’t meet her eye without exploding with the urge to fold her in his arms, guarded from the manicured claws of her mother.

Suddenly Polly appears—as bright faced and wholesome as her photo in the Cooper family portrait hanging in their entryway. Even in the blue light of the convent, her eyes glow, her face radiant. Her hair is long and sleek. And her belly protrudes like a perfect sphere, bearing the clear reason for Alice and Harold Cooper’s lies. 

Polly’s face is streaked with tears, her perfect red mouth screeching in anger at the sight of her mother. “Jason’s  _ dead?  _ And you didn’t tell me! And you kept me in  _ here?”  _

A pair of men in white uniforms jog from the opposite end of the hall at the first sign of escalation, and Alice pleads in return, a soft motherly tone and true distress pulling on her television anchor features. The orderlies hold Polly back by the forearms, careful not to touch her belly. Still, she screams for Betty.

Alice lays a firm grasp on Betty, and something snaps in him, something involuntary that lunges toward Mrs. Cooper. He will never find out what he might have done because the orderly beside him pins Jughead swiftly to the wall, where he’s left twisting and bobbing for a view of Betty embracing Polly, murmuring into her sister’s hair, “I’m gonna get you out of here, I swear to god.” 

Polly screams again as the men in white drag her, as if in slow motion, down the hallway while they watch, helpless. The orderly guards Jughead like this is middle school basketball, like he’s seen the look on Jughead’s face before. Jughead thinks the orderly is only lucky he never touched Betty; Jughead thinks he might have broken his nose.

(He’s done it before.)

  
  
  
  
  


They continue the sullen march to the parking lot. He’s too many paces behind to make much out of the fierce lecture Alice is giving, but he can imagine based on Betty’s frown and the tears that escape her stubborn, angry vise. When they step outside, Mrs. Cooper tries to tug Betty away, but with grit she twists out of Alice’s grip. “Give me a  _ second,  _ mom.”

Alice sighs, drifting away while Betty turns to him, tears full in her eyes. He wants to pull her close and tell her to let go.

“Are you okay to take the bus back?”

Jughead nods, a sudden tightness preventing any words from leaving his mouth. The near hour ahead of stewing, worrying, concocting an explanation for Toni so that she doesn’t rat on him for skipping to Mr. Topaz. Of thinking about what kind of hell the Coopers have prepared to punish Betty with. 

“I’m sorry you had to see all this. I—Thank you, just… thank you.” Betty swallows, then hugs him, pinning his arms too tightly for him to really return it. “She might take my phone away. Just check your email, okay?”

And then she’s gone, ducking into a car, and he’s alone in the rain, ambling to the bus stop and hoping he has enough change for the fare. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


It’s not that Jughead is a perfect student. He’s got all As, though probably only because his classes are absurdly easy and slow paced. He shows up late because his teachers will shrug. But when he gets back to her trailer, Toni is livid. 

“Your dad called. I guess your absence was unexcused and the attendance coordinator decided to be an ass today.” Jughead can’t help the snort of disbelief that slips out. Of course this once it would bit him in the ass.

“Don’t laugh, Jug. FP pulled some big dick-swinging act on my grandpa at work. Came into the store drunk and yammering about how you  _ can’t trust the village. _ He’s fucking embarrassed.”

Jughead decides it’s not worth the energy to explain that none of this is funny, just fucking cosmic. As if to punctuate the point, there is a thunder crack, followed by the flush of a downpour. Reluctantly, Toni lets him into the living room. “He’s in his room. I hope you brought your grovelling knees, dude.”

Jughead sighs, then plucks his hat off before knocking on Mr. Topaz’s door.

Thomas sits in his chair, staring out the window. Their conversation is short, and it is the one Jughead has been waiting for, the powder keg.  _ You need a long term plan, kid. I can’t keep you the way a child needs keeping. Not without money, and your dad doesn’t have it. And I respect your desire to keep the state out of it. But you need a plan. _

“I’ll be gone tomorrow,” he promises. This isn’t about him skipping school, but about the wild card of FP’s temper. Thomas looks sad, defeated even. He hoped that Jughead had more than that. A battle plan. A scholarship. A job lined up. Jughead has none of that, nothing except a hard drive full of rambling about a rich dead kid. 

There is more hemming and hawing, more caveats about  _ no need to jump to anything yet.  _ Backpedalling that makes Jughead’s ears hot. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Topaz. But I’ll find my next stop.”

He cycles through his backups and realizes he’s dry of ideas. And even though he knows it’s kosher to stay the night, Jughead itches to leave out until the trailer is dark, until he can slink in and out without potential to rehash. He’s heard Thomas’ truth, and Jughead doesn’t want to slide back into some kind of simple darkness again. 

So he walks out the door with an envelope from Mr. Topaz, knowing it’s cash he’s too proud to open until later, but too desperate not to keep. 

  
  
  


The cursor blinks back at him while he tries to scribe a new snippet of this ongoing saga. _High school sweethearts, maybe runaways,_ he types as a note. Something more urgent and primal stutters out of him, jabbing at the keys that have started to get sticky with use.

_ Here’s the thing about fear; it’s always there. Fear of the unknown, fear of facing it alone. Fear that those closest to you are the monsters. That as soon as you slay one, there is another waiting to take its place. _

Now he’s just making a metaphor out of video game bosses. 

Irresponsibly, he spends some of Thomas’ money on a burger, fries, and then a second course of late night breakfast. Food fills the void of panic and uncertainty. 

An unfamiliar sound effect draws him to his email messenger.  _ New message from Elizabeth Cooper.  _ Jughead closes all his other windows. 

**_Jug, it’s such a nightmare. I confronted them about how the pregnancy gave them motive, and about the case files. I mean they_ ** **knew** **_about this plot for Jason and Polly to run away. Who’s to say they didn’t tie up loose ends?_ **

Strangely, the potential hyperbole of Betty’s message soothes him. Reminds him that everyone has shit, even if it’s different. He’s not the only one awake late on a school night, cornered into an undesirable and inescapable reality.

**_And? What did they say?_ **

He cleans even the iceberg garnish off his plate while waiting for her typing ellipses, swiping the lettuce through some mustard. Pop takes his plate with an eyebrow quirk that signals to Jughead there’s free pie coming. For once, Jughead does not protest. He needs the win and the calories.

**_My mom started_ ** **laughing** **_. She said she_ ** **wished** **_she’d killed Jason Blossom. I’m not sure if this knowledge is better or worse than it being true._ **

**_They’re gaslighting me, calling me crazy._ **

His fingers fly in response.  **_You’re not crazy. Neither is your sister—places like that shouldn’t be allowed to exist._ **

The pie is cherry and comes with ice cream. “You want me to call anybody?” Pop asks, which Jughead flinches at. He has no idea who Pop might be tempted to call. There has never been any inkling that he’d snitch to CPS on FP; Pop is too savvy to Jughead’s disposition for that. Besides, there’s no way Pop knows how deep it goes. Pop doesn’t frequent the White Wyrm. He doesn’t mix up in the gang spats or tolerate any  _ nonsense.  _

“Like Mr. Andrews,” he clarifies, reading the panic on Jughead’s face. What is it, he thinks, with all these older men determined to thrust him into the arms of protection, like he’s a Victorian ward? Jughead just shakes his head, pacifying Pop enough that he retreats again.

A new message from Betty distracts him.  **_I’m pretty sure if you end an argument with ‘you don’t have to believe us, we’re you’re parents,’ it’s a sign that you’re being manipulated._ **

Something cracks in his chest, something about her message hitting too close to his own untended wounds.  **_I’m sorry, Betty_ ** is all he can manage, his hands shaking with the impulse to tear across town and tell her it’s fine, they’ll run away, they’ll dissolve into the earth, they’ll find something outside the noise.

The sentiment is melodramatic, but stamping it out distracts him enough to pack up, hike back, and fall asleep for one last night on the Topaz family sofa.

  
  
  
  
  


His alarm sounds absurdly early so he can avoid crossing paths with Toni or her grandparents in the morning. In the light of day, his priorities feel clear. He needs to ferry his stuff to the  _ Red and Black _ office day by day, so that he doesn’t get fucking strip searched at morning security, or whatever bullshit infringement of privacy he’d have to endure to prove he’s not hauling a meth-making lab into Southside High through his trekking bag.

But first, he needs to see Betty. Her words, her anger and fear, eat a hole in his unusually full stomach, rendering him starving by the time his alarm blares early. 

Jughead decides he cannot wait all day for another missive or a _ Pop’s later? _ text. So he loads up the bike and heads to Elm Street for the second time this week. 

Remembering that her bedroom faces Archie’s, Jughead considers the best way to get her attention. The whole pebbles-on-the-window move feels beyond gimmicky. Besides, he doesn’t trust his own aim not to hit the wrong window. Besides, he could text her. It still wouldn’t solve the problem of needing to shout from below, or make Betty overcome the obstacle of her parents. 

Then he notices Fred Andrew’s ladder laying in the grass; Archie probably left it out after cleaning the gutters. It’s more conspicuous than pebbles, but if he’s likely to get caught with either method, at least he can get into the same room as her for a few moments.

The ladder is surprisingly light, and he props it with some amount of confidence against Betty’s bedroom window. The insanity dawns on him only halfway up the ladder. Archie or Fred could be looking out the window any second. What’s he  _ doing?  _ The only sensible thing is to scramble all the way up.

First, he sees her reflection in the vanity mirror, worrying the locket around her neck. Something flips in his stomach, and he hears Sweet Pea— _ you have to make a move.  _ As if attached to someone else's body, his knuckles rap on the glass.

Betty’s what-are-you- _ doing  _ look makes him blush; what the fuck  _ is _ he doing? This is what happens when you watch too many damn movies, he thinks. But her wide smile makes him forget, makes him temporarily levitate as she runs to the window and lifts it open with a grunt.

It is all the movies, perhaps, that draw the next line from his mouth. “Hey there, Juliet. Nurse off duty?” His voice sounds a little weak, uncertain. Betty just slides over to allow him space to ungracefully swing himself inside. 

Betty’s bedroom strikes Jughead as unlike her. Or at least, unlike the Betty he sees, all questions and stubborn insistence. Not floral wallpaper. She’s staring expectantly, and he gets extra referential when he’s nervous, stories clipping into his thoughts to muffle the raw emotion beneath. “You haven’t gone full yellow wallpaper on me yet, have you?”

Betty starts pacing. “My parents are crazy.”

Jughead ignores the unbidden image of FP, slinking drunkenly into the gas station Thomas Topaz manages. Barking out, slurring, pointing. “They’re parents,” he means to be soothing. “They’re all crazy.”

She’s still pacing. “What if Polly really is, too? What if—maybe I am.”

He catches the strain in her voice, the worry. The glimmer of conviction. God damn Alice Cooper and whatever she muttered in Betty’s ear as they left the convent.  _ Fuck _ them. 

Jughead grabs her shoulder, the only place he’s managed to touch her—anything more and he thinks he’d lose control. It’s a safety handle, a place he can hold her without burning. Jughead has never felt out of control like this; he had started doubting if he could. But even Betty’s shoulder, the slow sloping juncture of her neck, make him lightheaded. Her sweater is so soft, and he wants to kiss her so, so badly, even when she’s on the verge of tears. Even when she’s spitting mad. His hand loses its grounding, sliding down her arm.

“Hey,” he consoles. “We’re all crazy.” It sounds stupid as soon as it leaves his mouth, but her head drops, and the relieved little smile that flashes across her faces eggs him on. She moves, he thinks, even closer. 

“We’re not our parents, Betty. We’re not our families.”  _ I will not call you crazy. I will not treat you like glass. _

And he’s telling himself, too. Jughead has nothing, no one to speak of, but he wants her. And Jughead is not  _ his  _ parents either. He will always care, he will always be here, he’ll always show up, even if he has to steal a ladder to do it, or piss off Alice Cooper. 

She’s so close, closer than she’s ever been, and she doesn’t step back when his hand drops to his side. 

“Also.” Jughead half-swallows the word, and she says “What?” even though she’s just staring at his mouth. He moves his gaze from her eyes, to her mouth, and back to her eyes. 

Betty smiles a little, like she knows. “What,” she prompts again, but it’s soft, it’s  _ anything you want, just tell me.  _

And he does, but not in so many words. For a second, they feel frozen together, both a little shocked that their mouths are touching, that it’s this soft. And then it’s been long enough that she could have pulled away, and she doesn’t. They both move just a little, into the kiss, and every thought melts from his mind. It’s good—not  _ good,  _ like he knows what he’s doing, but he still feels it in the tips of his toes when Betty sighs, smiling, her nose bumping his, his shoulders falling, his own sigh meeting hers.

Then she gasps. “The car!”

Something about the complete nonsense of her reaction relieves him. Not  _ get out  _ or, alternatively, something trite and potentially overwhelming. “Wow,” he laughs, unable to contain his amusement at her outburst. “That’s what you’re thinking about during our moment?” It’s a tease, something normal for them. 

“No!” Betty strains, and Jughead’s neck flushes hot with pride at her indignation. “Polly said that Jason stashed a car somewhere down Route 40. By some kind of sign? If we could find it, we could verify that Polly’s telling the truth and my parents are lying.” 

_ And if they are?  _ He does not ask. Betty reaches for his hand. “I need to know, Juggie.”

  
  
  
  


After Cooper family dinner, when Betty begs to attend the Riverdale High Variety Show as a ruse, they walk along Route 40, beginning from the Welcome to Riverdale sign. The sky is dark and clouded, but the bright determination of Betty’s eyes is like starlight. Even if his arm still feels sore from the whack Sweet Pea gives him during gym.  _ What are you smiling about, dumbass?  _

(Juggie. He’s smiling about  _ Juggie,  _ and the girl who said it, like she’d been calling him that their whole lives.)

As they walk, Betty gives him the full rundown of her meeting with Polly at the Sisters. Her voice wavers only once, but when it does, Jughead takes her hand. It folds tentatively into his, growing more relaxed when he smooths the pad of his thumb along the back of hers. It starts to sprinkle, and they speed from a trudge to a jog.

It’s about a mile in total before they reach it—a sign. Old, overgrown, advertising Blossom Maple Farms. A little obvious for Jason’s getaway car, he thinks. But then Betty shines her flashlight into the thicket, and there it is. An old Volvo, covered in a tarp and some stray branches. Whatever surges through him—terror, delight, relief, feels like it shocks through Betty too. 

They peel back the tarp and Betty picks the truck lock open with just two bobby pins, cursing once or twice when her fingers slip as the rain falls more steadily. 

Betty fixates on the letterman jacket, tracing the embroidery with Jason’s name. Jughead’s eye are drawn to a familiarly sized package. He’s found these in his dad’s truck. Seen them pulled out of Kurtz’s locker last June. He whips out his phone. “Don’t touch anything. This is evidence.” 

Jughead snaps a few pictures, all the while something curdling in the pit of his stomach at the realization that this will lead them down roads Jughead has been avoiding. He sends one to Toni.  **_Jason was dealing for the Serpents, wasn’t he?_ **

Betty closes the trunk. “We have to find Sheriff Keller.”

  
  
  
  


They tear down the road, sopping wet but alight with adrenaline. Betty has more stamina for running with all that cheer practice, but Jughead keeps up okay. He lets her barrel through the doors of RHS first. Not that they seem to lock these doors with any kind of discretion. You can slip in here as anyone, with nearly anything.

If they weren’t on a very specific mission, Jughead might have found the perfect moment to scope out a new place to sleep. Plus, it might keep him running into Betty. Not that he needs an excuse for that anymore. Not if this is real, if that kiss wasn’t a blip of adrenaline accelerating so many more.

Betty swerves left, seeming to know where she’s going. 

Oh, right. A large poster board sign reminds him: The Variety Show. He can hear Josie McCoy’s voice, crooning Donna Summer through the walls. 

He hangs back, letting Betty be the one to tug Sheriff Keller aside. If he opens his mouth and says  _ drugs,  _ he’ll get the once over he’s hoping to avoid. There is a puddle dripping on the floor, and he’s hoping his sopping clothes and hair will distract from his unusual presence. Jostled again by the standing ovation for the Pussycats, including the mayor, Jughead tucks himself into a dark corner of the auditorium. He notes the familiar whistle of Fred Andrews cutting through the crowd.

Then he realizes it’s because Archie is up next. Jughead watches his friend fumble nervously with the stool, then the capo. But then he starts, and even though it’s not Jughead’s cup of tea musically, he’s relieved to see Archie finding a way out from under the Grundy mess. A whorl of of guilt hits him, wondering if he’s been distant in the same way he criticized Archie for only weeks ago.  _ You have enough on your plate.  _

Out of the corner of his eye, Sheriff Keller and a deputy make a bolt for the parking lot. Betty approaches, looking even more panicked than before, somehow. “We have to get to Polly. We have to find out what else she knows.”

Jughead nods, unsure how they’re going to get to the Sisters in a downpour, but she answers for him. “Kevin’s dad is driving us.”

Archie’s voice carries over her words, but Jughead hears them loud enough to sweat. The noise breaks both of their concentration for a beat. He grits his teeth. “I can’t do that.”

Betty’s brow furrows. “Why not?”

Here it comes, he thinks. The moment the spell breaks. Really, he should be impressed with how blindly trusting she is, so fair and single-minded. So opposite of the deputy who will take one look at him and slap on the label, without caveats or qualifiers: Serpent. 

Jughead’s tongue feels stuck on the top of his mouth. He doesn’t know how to tell her, but he also can’t  _ not  _ tell her. “I got charged last year.” He’s not coming back from this. “I punched a kid, and the SRO at my school decided to make a stink out of it and slapped a gang affiliation charge on top of assault. In the end, all I had to do was pay a fine but—” Jesus. When her parents find out they’ll never let him near her. “My dad never paid it.” 

Her mouth pinches, thinking. “Okay.” Betty squeezes his hand, like she’s committing, promising something. She’s far too calm. “Plan B. We take the bike.”

Jughead doesn’t know what to scoff at more, her complete lack of reaction or her ludicrous solution. “It’s storming.”

Chin taut, Betty pulls out her phone and starts dialing. Apparently, they’re not talking about this, about the chasm of difference between them. To Sheriff Keller, Betty is his son’s friend. Jughead is a sixteen year old he once uncuffed in a jail cell. 

Betty leads him back down the hallway, waving the Sheriff off. “V, hey,” she says into the phone. “You sounded amazing! Yes, of course… I know. I have so much to tell you, too. But I need… a huge favor. Of Smithers, actually.”

  
  
  
  
  


In the last twenty four hours, Jughead has lost the roof from over his head, kissed Betty Cooper, and found himself in the back of a Lodge’s town car. Smithers barrels down the road, ensuring they’ll be a few minutes behind the Sheriff. Jughead wonders if he’ll wait in the car once they arrive.

Their hands are still intertwined, and he thinks this is how he doesn’t spin out. She’s like an anchor, or a generator. His skin feels electric with hormones, strung out on this.

“You don’t have any questions?” he whispers. About me, he means. About his affiliations.

Betty fixes him with an expression of utmost focus, plus something bare and vulnerable, too. “Will you find the truth with me? About Jason? Wherever it leads?”

“Yes, of course.” 

Betty’s head drifts to rest on his shoulder. “Then no. I don’t have any questions, Juggie.”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u to everyone who has shown me love on this fic, it is a joy to write!   
> i cherish your comments so very much even when i am (sorry) glacially slow to respond to them!!


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